Conjuring up come-hither connotations of strip-joint signage and blokey songs by Elvis, Jay Z and Mötley Crüe, women women women will not be the obvious title for a critical exhibition of feminine artists. “I like the thought of it being tongue-in-cheek and barely provocative,” says dressmaker Simone Rocha of her alternative of identify for the multigenerational, 19 artist present that she has simply curated for Lismore Fortress Arts, the up to date artwork programme at Lismore Fortress, the Irish residence of the Dukes of Devonshire.
Clothier and curator Simone Rocha. Photograph: Gabby Laurent
Dublin-born Rocha is the a number of award-winning creator of edgy womenswear that performs with conventional notions of femininity: assume exaggerated ruching and ruffles, flowing ribbons and bows, dangling blood-ruby earrings and knee socks adorned with encrustations of pearls. Her puffy, flouncy, lacey and typically leathery clothes are flamboyant, theatrical and exquisitely made and have received her a excessive profile fanbase which incorporates Billie Eilish, Chloë Sevigny, Renée Zellweger and Rihanna. However on the identical time, Rocha’s togs significantly mess with materials and stylistic conventions, and this spirit of darkly subversive mischief resonates in a lot of the work she’s chosen for the present.
Louise Bourgeois’s Janus in Leather-based Jacket (1968).
In any case, there’s nothing demure nor obedient about Louise Bourgeois’s dangling double-phallic bronze Janus in Leather-based Jacket (1968); Dorothy Cross’s nipple-toed cowskin stilettos or trend photographer Harley Weir’s untitled {photograph} made earlier this 12 months of an grownup lady dreamily suckling on the breast of one other. In Genieve Figgis’s latest portray Upstairs Downstairs (2021), figures in maid and butler’s uniforms are lined up as if for a proper {photograph} however, in a situation the place Downton Abbey merges with James Ensor, this orderly home association has been horribly distorted by means through which all their faces appear to have melted into grotesquely cadaverous masks. Figgis’s zombie workforce takes on a selected resonance inside the context of Lismore Fortress, a spot of fairytale magnificence underpinned by centuries of behind-the-scenes home toil.
Set up view of women women women at Lismore Fortress Arts. Photograph: Jed Niezgoda
Maybe not surprisingly given the day job of the curator, the assorted methods through which clothes can sign, form and in addition distort id is a conspicuous theme. Most of the works on present additionally chime with Rocha’s emotionally-charged use of typically incongruous supplies. Together with Cross’s furry mammary footwear, Bourgeois’s shiny, sheathed double phallus and Figgis’s impasto uniforms, different suggestive clothes embody the voluminous and considerably Rocha-esque white clothes worn by the little women in younger Irish artist Sian Costello’s lushly executed sequence of Wishful Self Portrait work; and the sprigged floral shirt that Iris Häussler has uncannily suspended in a block of translucent wax like an embalmed spiritual relic. The harmless cuteness of the powder blue frocks and matching hats worn by the pair of women painted by Cassi Namoda solely renders all of the extra horrific the truth that they have been conjoined twins who had been offered as slaves for show in a circus.
Cassi Namoda’s Nervousness … Untitled, Conjoined Twins (2020). {Photograph}: Courtesy the artist
No artist has scrutinised the function of garments and costume as a cultural signifier extra comprehensively than Cindy Sherman. A vital addition to the Lismore present are ten photographs from her iconic 1976 (Untitled) Bus Rider sequence of small black-and-white images depicting a number of characters—male, feminine, Black and white—of all ages and all portrayed by Sherman herself. This landmark physique of labor, which speaks volumes with probably the most fundamental props, poses, garments and make-up, was not solely a prelude to Sherman’s lifelong exploration of gender, self notion and the markers of sophistication and id, nevertheless it has additionally shaped a key inspiration for quite a few subsequent artists who proceed to mine these themes, together with Yasumasa Morimura, Gillian Carrying and Rachel McLean.
Cindy Sherman’s Untitled (1976/2000). Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. © Cindy Sherman
Up to date artwork has all the time been central to Rocha’s follow and the artists she has both referenced in her collections, illustrated in publications or exhibited in her retailers prolong from Pae White and Roni Horn to Robert Rauschenberg and John Constable. Louise Bourgeois has been an abiding affect, with Rocha incorporating her textile patterns into clothes, in addition to creating a variety of Bourgeois-inspired earrings and even designing store show models primarily based on her Cell sculptures. The grande dame of visceral psychodramas and bodily provocations is right here represented by two sculptures, – the leather-jacketed Janus and an untitled bronze forged of 4 clasped palms every projecting a severed forearm–each of that are housed in their very own separate cell-like area in Lismore’s Spherical Tower.
Rocha’s parade of women (women women) ranges from massive names to latest graduates and all that lies in between; and far of the present’s power lies within the conversations struck up between its very numerous parts. The small home that sprouts from considered one of Bourgeois’s severed arms not solely references the claustrophobic hybrid femme-maisons which have cropped up in her work from the Forties, however right here additionally reverberates within the 20-something British artist Sophie Barber’s large portray of a pair of pink homes that covers your entire again wall of the primary gallery. Teetering precariously on spindly stilts and looking out extra like an odd couple than two items of structure, his enormous dangling tarpaulin-canvas sends out combined messages about fireside, residence and relationships in addition to offering a daring backdrop to the present.
Different fruitful exchanges embody the way in which through which the intimate performative depth of a 1977 self portrait by the late Francesca Woodman corresponds with a close-by collaborative textile piece by younger Irish duo Eimear Lynch and Domino Whisker. Right here three sepia images of a ghostly dancing females are framed in suture-like purple stitchwork, which additionally nods to Louise Bourgeois’s expressively embroidered materials. Sian Costello solely graduated from Limmerick College of Artwork and Design lower than two years in the past, however her small, lush, barely sinister infanta-girls greater than maintain their very own amidst the pictures of Roni Horn, Cindy Sherman and an excellent resin lip-lamp by the late, nice Alina Szapocznikow.
Left to proper: Eimear Lynch; Daisy Hoppen; Simone Rocha; Lizzie Ridout; Laura Burlington. Photograph: Louisa Buck
Together with her chosen gang of artist-girls, Rocha presents a extremely private engagement with, and problem to notions of the feminine. Through the opening weekend there was additionally a further, albeit unintentional, performative factor supplied by the designer and her three-woman staff, who, along with Lismore’s present chatelaine and fellow trend maven Laura Cavendish, Countess of Burlington, reduce a dramatic sprint as they perambulated by way of the fort’s halls and gardens, clad in an ever-changing array of Rocha finery. From beribboned heads to bejewelled and typically bovver-booted toes, this formidable posse resonated with each the present present in addition to lots of Lismore’s outdated grasp portraits of earlier wives, daughters and duchesses, offering dwelling respiratory proof—if any have been wanted—of the perpetual energy of women, women women!
• women women women, Lismore Fortress Arts, till October 30 2022
