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By Nicholas Carolan

A new festival dives deep on fashion’s place in contemporary culture

The inaugural SCCI Fashion Hub interrogates fashion's place within the broader context of contemporary art and culture

A series of seminars titled Fashion Business Futures will examine the challenges of pursuing innovation in a rapidly changing world. The designer Gail Sorronda, whose work is pictured above, will appear in Design on the Homefront, a panel featuring emerging and established designers discussing the challenges and opportunities of independent design in Australia.

Courtesy of Gail Sorronda/Emilie Elizabeth

As part of a series of Ethical Fashion panel discussions, sustainable fashion authority Clare Press will devise a day on fashion ethics featuring contributions from the likes of designer Bianca Spender, Editor-at-Large of Vogue India, Bandana Tewari and others working to examine the intersection of fashion and positive social change. In a session titled India’s Fashion Artisans, Caroline Poiner (Artisans of Fashion), Tewari and Lakshmi Sukumaran (SAAKI) will examine whether India’s rich history of craftsmanship provides answers to fashion’s sustainability crisis.

Image courtesy of Vogue India, The Travelling Jacket, Chimmi Choden/Marie Barsch

In a Sutra Stitching Workshop inspired by sacred Kundalini Yoga, Dr Clara Vuletich will illuminate the link between Kundalini and the meditative art of hand-stitching.

Image courtesy of Dr Clara Vuletich, Sutra Stitching/Katherine May

In another Ethical Fashion event, the Amassment designer and RMIT teacher Paul Castro, whose work is pictured above, will focus on pieces like his innovative 8 Shirts Dress, which reimagines waste as a resource to challenge the conventional trajectory of ‘produce, use, and discard’.

Image courtesy of Paul Castro, 2016/Tracey Lee Hayes

Artist Nasim Nasr will draw on her personal experience as an Iranian-born Australian to probe the examine the politics of dressing the female form. In a co-presentation with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Nasr will immerse the MAAS Turbine Hall in video, sound and contemporary dance, delivering a runway show unlike any other seen before.

Nasim Nasr, Women in Shadow, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2011/Rodney Magazinovic

A Fashion Film Festival will examine the cinematic medium’s power to show fashion in a new light. The festival will include films that have never been screened in Australia and some seen only in limited release, and its opening night will premiere a specially commissioned short, Who’s a Fly Bird?, the winning entry in the SCCI/AFTRS Future of Fashion short film competition. Other films include The Boy Who Made Shoes For Lizards, a documentary about Manolo Blahnik, and Yohji Yamamoto: Dressmaker, a portrait of the life and work of the acclaimed Japanese designer.

Still from Who’s a Fly Bird?, 2018/Directors: Bianca Tomchin and Mat Harvey/Still photography: Ella Zaman

SCCI Fashion Hub, a cerebral new fashion festival facilitated by one of Australia’s great cultural incubators, will seek to situation fashion’s role within the broader context of contemporary culture.

The inaugural SCCI Fashion Hub, presented by the Sherman Centre for Culture and Ideas (or SCCI), will seek to interrogate the state of contemporary fashion in all its multitudes through a rigorous program of talks, performances, workshops and films featuring local and international talent and taking place over 17 days at venues throughout Sydney. The Fashion Hub event compliments the SCCI’s Architecture Hub, taking place later this year in September, and both events signal the commencement of a five year program that aims to shine a light on the complexity of both fields through creating a forum for industry professionals and members of the general public of all ages.

Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of the newly created SCCI, which launched earlier this year, Dr Gene Sherman AM, announced news of the artistic program today, saying in a statement that “Fashion, in particular, has lacked serious attention as a sophisticated, intellectually rich and multifaceted mode of creative expression. Through SCCI, we seek to elevate it to a more prominent position alongside other [art forms], and begin a conversation that is long overdue.”

The program itself addresses a multiplicity of topics related to the industry at large, including fashion’s ethics, it’s place in a museum context, in film and photography, illustration and in the written word; fashion’s nature as both a business and an art form will also receive ample attention. Anchoring the program are three headline speakers whose diverse experience provides a neat précis of the Fashion Hub’s ambitions more generally: Director of Curatorial Affairs of the Grand Palais, Paris, Emmanuel Coquery; interdisciplinary Japanese designer, Akira Minagawa; and Editor-at-Large of Vogue India, Bandana Tewari. Regional designers including Bianca Spender, Paul Vasileff of the Paolo Sebastian label and Karen Walker will also participate, as will artists including Nasim Nasr, Mella Jaarsma and Kate Scardifield.

Swipe left on the gallery above to explore select highlights from the inaugural SCCI Fashion Hub program in greater detail.

As capacity is limited at the SCCI’s main hub in Paddington, the festival will take place at venues across the city including the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS) and the Chauvel Cinema. In line with its philanthropic aims, the SCCI aims to encourage full house attendance at each event, and as such, many events indicate a ticket price but will be free on attendance. If you do not attend an event you have booked, you will be charged the full ticket price by way of a donation to the SCCI. Tickets are transferrable.

The SCCI Fashion Hub will take place from April 5-21, 2018, at various venues throughout Sydney. More information on the full program of events is available here.

Tile image: Courtesy of Gail Sorronda/Emilie Elizabeth
Cover image: Still from Yohji Yamamoto Dressmaker, 2016/Director: The Chau Ngo

topics: CULTURE NEWS, Events, SYDNEY, SCCI, SCCI Fashion Hub, fashion, Exhibitions, MAAS