Public Talk: Lucy McKenzie and Beca Lipscombe (Atelier E.B)

DESCRIPTION

On the first day of their exhibition Passer-by at Garage, Atelier E.B (artist Lucy McKenzie and designer Beca Lipscombe) will be in discussion with the project’s curators, Oksana Polyakova and Daria Bobrenko.

The exhibition Atelier E.B: Passer-by is based on McKenzie and Lipscombe’s two-year research project exploring some of the key processes in the history of fashion, retail, and the twentieth-century’s world expos and fairs. The exhibition is built around biographies of the people and stories of the places and events that informed contemporary display practices in the fashion industry and outside of it.

Atelier E.B believe that the passer-by, who learns about fashion from magazines, social networks, the Internet and shopping windows, is a consumer of fashion just like those who purchase new garments from fashion brands.

In discussion with curators Oksana Polyakova and Daria Bobrenko, Atelier E.B will speak about the little-known protagonists of the exhibition and explain how its stories are connected to the world of contemporary art and their own practice.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Oksana Polyakova (b. 1990, Moscow) is an art historian, curator, researcher, and Field Research project manager at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2012, she graduated in art history from the Moscow State Pedagogical University. In 2014, she was assistant curator of I Live, I See, Erik Bulatov’s retrospective at Moscow Manezh. From 2015 to 2018, she was a participant in the artist-run initiative Krasny in Moscow. In 2016, she took part in the EUNIC Internship Programme for Young Curators at Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm. Her curatorial projects include Transparent Borders (Krasny Centre, Moscow 2017), Ilmira Bolotyan. Date in the Museum (Fragment Gallery, Moscow, 2017), Ilmira Bolotyan. Immaterial Labour (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2019), and Between Zero and One. Alexander Pankin and the Avant-Gardes (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2019). She lives and works in Moscow.

Daria Bobrenko (b. 1994, Moscow) is an art historian, researcher, and coordinator of the Field Research program at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2017, she graduated in Art History and Theory from the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow and in 2019 completed the Master’s program History of Artistic Culture and the Art Market at  the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. She lives and works in Moscow.


Beca Lipscombe (b. 1973, Edinburgh; lives and works in Edinburgh) is a fashion and textile designer, printmaker, and a graduate of Central Saint Martins. Her professional practice is multi-layered and draws upon a vernacular aesthetic. This sensibility was evident in both her eponymous label (2000–2007) and her work as a freelance designer for various companies, including Liberty, Chloe, Stella McCartney, and Ann-Sofie Back.

Until 2011 she taught on the MA Fashion+Textiles at The Glasgow School of Art, stepping down from this post to concentrate on her own work and the work of her company Atelier E.B, which she runs in partnership with artist Lucy McKenzie. Lipscombe’s varied practice has included the production of fashion, commissioned display and interiors for public and private spaces, textiles, furniture, and publishing.


Lucy McKenzie (b. 1977, Glasgow; lives and works in Brussels) is a visual artist who works with painting—including public murals, interior décor, and illusionism—to explore hierarchical systems. She studied at a private school for decorative painting in Brussels in 2007–2008, and the commercial techniques she learned there have been central to her work ever since. Techniques such as fake wood, marble, and tromp l’oeil, with their labor-intensive modes of production, and alignment of value with skill are innately conservative idioms. For McKenzie this conservativism facilitates a tense relationship between form and content.

She exhibits internationally, including solo shows at Tate Britain, London (2003), MoMA, New York (2008), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013), and Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, Venice (2017). Since 2011 she has, together with designer Beca Lipscombe, produced fashion collections under the name Atelier E.B. The label explores alternative methods of producing, exhibiting, documenting, and distributing independent fashion. Their exhibition Atelier E.B — Passer-by was staged at Serpentine, London in 2018 and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris in 2019. Through the figure of the fashion mannequin it examines the intersection of art, fashion, commerce, and display.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Free admission with advance registration.

The talk will be in English and Russian will simultaneous interpretation.

It is accessible for deaf and hard of hearing visitors and will be interpreted into Russian Sign Language.

REGISTRATION