Monday 20 July 2009

3rd Solo Show to open March 2010

My 3rd solo exhibition; "YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU EAT: Eating Disorders in Fashion", is set to open during The L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival 2010. It is scheduled to run from March 14th - 28th, 2010, and I hope it will feature at The Adelaide Fringe Festival in the February beforehand.
The theme of the works began as a response to the deaths of 3 South American models; Ana Carolina Reston Macan, Luisel and Eliana Ramos in 2006/7. This triggered Madrid and Milan Fashion Weeks to adopt a policy of no underweight models on the runways, and I am hoping to urge Melbourne to consider enforcing it too.
The following image was inspired by my research into the Body Mass Index statistics of 50 prominent female celebrities. I discovered 69.8% of these are underweight (with a BMI of 18.5 or less) and that 18 out of the 50 are at or below what the World Health Organisation defines to be starvation (a BMI of 16 or less.) Healthy range is 18.5-24.9. The exhibition will feature a number of text-based works around the theme, including a giant wordsearch, and will see collaborations between myself a a handful of fashion designers. Below is a sneak-peak at the first of a series of 100 original art badges based around the celebrity BMI theme.