Regardless of trends or personal style, fashion functions as a visual vocabulary which conveys the practical facts of our daily activities and expresses our aspirational images of ourselves. English artist Kelly Gardner's sculptures of dresses made from pages of books and lit from within by electrical lights poetically articulate that duality - clothes illuminate and project the true stories about who we are and also the fictions of who we wish we were. In rendering those tales, she selects textiles whose delicacy evokes the fragility of flesh, while the rich, vintage Victorian tints of her lace prints create an appealingly anachronistic sense of sensuality.
But it is her ethereal photograms of intimate garments, from Christening gowns and gloves to nightdresses and slips, that most strikingly summon up the humility and curiosity that a contemporary flea-market shopper feels when holding an item that is new to her but was once close to someone she will never know. The awareness that these garments contributed to a stranger's daily life, or might have represented cherished memories, will haunt the experience of wearing them. Gardner's sensitive, beautifully rendered work gives new life to old objects, whose previous lives make them significant in ways their current inhabitants will never fully know.
To see more of Kelly Gardner's work on Your Gallery click here.
Ana Finel Honigman
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a critic, PhD candidate in art history at Oxford University and Senior London Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine.
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