<div class="ex-modal__content__row"><i class="info-bar__icon info-bar__disabled info-bar__noCursor ex-modal__icon"></i>
<p class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__text--tableCell">The exhibition is&nbsp;wheelchair accessible</p>
<a class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__link" href="/ru/visit/disabled_visitors?kind=blind">Learn more</a></div>
<div class="ex-modal__content__row"><i class="info-bar__icon info-bar__deaf info-bar__noCursor ex-modal__icon"></i>
<p class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__text--tableCell">Russian Sign Language Tours of&nbsp;Spring Exhibitions</p>
<a class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__link" href="/en/event/unique-deaf-guided-tours-of-new-exhibitions" target="_blank">Learn more</a></div>
<p class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__footer">Garage Museum of&nbsp;Contemporary Art organizes regularly scheduled events for visitors with disabilities. <a class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__link ex-modal__content__inline" href="/en/visit/disabled_visitors?kind=blind">Learn more</a>.</p>

<p class="ex-modal__content__text">Individual Tours,&nbsp;Tours for Students and Schoolchildren, and a&nbsp;Day at Garage.You just need to choose the tour that's best for you.</p>
<p><a class="ex-modal__content__text ex-modal__content__link" href="/en/visit/tours">Learn more</a></p>

 Atelier E.B: <i>Passer-by</i>

<p><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(4458).jpg" alt="" width="1067" height="1600" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543249%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-wKEy5&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p>In the middle of the exhibition a mannequin by Rudolf Belling is displayed. Belling was one of the most important representatives of classical modernism, whose practice brought together art, craft, and industry. His <em>Fashion Sculpture A</em> from 1921 was made in collaboration with a Berlin workshop. Their hyper-modern appearance meant that Belling&rsquo;s mannequins were ahead of their time, and they continue to inspire artists and designers today. The press named this mannequin &ldquo;the aluminum goddess&rdquo; and it anticipates the machine woman &ldquo;Maria&rdquo; in Fritz Lang&rsquo;s 1927 film <em>Metropolis</em>.</p>
<p>The exhibition offers a variety of surfaces for us to run our haptic gazes over. The common ground between these diverse objects is the pre-eminence of facade. They are enigmatic objects, representing the cultural systems that produced them, to which facade is both a barrier and a window. Surface finish sometimes masks construction that is flimsy, or it can misleadingly give the impression of effortlessness to something which is in fact the product of great labor. The Belling mannequin is made of fragile papier mach&eacute;, although it emulates the perfect chassis of a sports car.</p>
<p>Historically<em>,</em> artists have often used fragmented mannequins in their installations. <em>&nbsp;Passer-by</em> considers mannequins as part of a wide cooperation between creative fields and understands them as compelling objects in themselves, without the automatic need for artistic imposition (in particular gestural intervention like dismemberment or surface interference) to elevate them to some notionally higher aesthetic plane. The individuals and cultures that produced these mannequins are fascinating in their own right, not least because their histories offer multiple narratives that avoid basic binaries. When placed in a physical space together, these objects activate thrilling relationships and contrasts, their multiple gazes falling in unexpected places, and their states of dress or undress signifying so much more than conventional titillation. The span of eras and locations, bodies, gestures, and stories would supply ample material for a mannequin&rsquo;s autobiography.</p>

Rudolf Belling, Fashion Sculpture A

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(11163).jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543234%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-07oCF&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p>If you are facing the main entrance to the Museum, to your left is the contemporary part of <em>Passer-by</em>.&nbsp; Atelier E.B approached the artists Tauba Auerbach, Anna Blessmann, Steff Norwood, Elizabeth Radcliffe, Bernie Reid, and Markus Selg to make mannequins or supports to display outfits from the duo&rsquo;s previous three collections: <em>The Inventors of Tradition, Ost End Girls</em>, and <em>Inventors of Tradition II</em>. These artists are customers and collaborators of Atelier E.B, so they already had direct contact with the clothes they display. What&rsquo;s more, they all work in diverse forms and mediums, and have a sophisticated understanding of the cultural importance of dress and the human body in relation to clothing and design.</p>
<p>The only brief to the artists was that their work should showcase Atelier E.B&rsquo;s clothing in ways that made it beautiful and interesting, whatever that meant to them. In all these works the concept is expressed through the material choices in support of, and in contrast to, the garments on show. For artists today, with easier access to 3D digital technology, there is the misconception that traditional craft is now superfluous in replicating human forms. There is the assumption that a full body scan of a beautiful woman, which is digitally fine-tuned and then carved from expensive marble, is somehow <em>the same as</em> a Canova sculpture. But it is not. The works made for <em>Passer-by</em> show how important stylization and simplification are in creating beauty. The pieces also express what can be done when an object and its display are created with a consciousness of the power dynamic inherent in the relationship, and actively address the distinction between artwork and mere prop. If mannequins are deficient in any way it is, in part, because they have to embody a universal ideal while being versatile enough to demonstrate a wide selection of clothing. The mannequin custom made for a specific garment or outfit does not have this problem, as it can fuse with the clothing and the spirit of the outfit in a far more subtle and complex way.</p>

Artists' Mannequins and Display Mechanisms 

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%B7-%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8-5454541.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1100" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543228%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-NwQ4K&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p>Women are of particular interest for the project: those who flourished within the industry (Cora Scovil, Martha Sch&ouml;n), infiltrated it from unusual backgrounds (Mary Blair, K&auml;the Kruse) or subverted it (Lynne Hershmann Leeson). Two marionette mannequins by Sasha Morgenthaler, seated side by side, are key pieces in this section, as they embody so many of the important topics of the exhibition.</p>
<p>The relationship of female artists to mannequins is a complex one. The female mannequin carries a psychological load because, in embodying the idealized state of feminine stasis, it is so often used as a stand-in for woman herself. In the hierarchical system of art, the appropriated object&mdash;in this case the mannequin&mdash;must be characterized as na&iuml;ve, ignorant of its own agency, and unable to talk back.</p>
<p>Any use of mannequins is colored by the legacy of the Surrealists, and their chauvinism becomes subverted in women&rsquo;s hands. However, no matter an artist&rsquo;s gender, the assumption that you can bestow prestige on an object through artistic intervention (an assumption which presupposes that value was absent in the first place) mimics a power dynamic that places fine art above the applied arts, and by extension male over female subjectivity. Because mannequins are inherently artificial and therefore, in modernism&rsquo;s reasoning, fundamentally female, there has always been an unease around male shop dummies. They are in a double bind of extremes; on one side being considered &ldquo;too gay&rdquo; and not &ldquo;manly&rdquo; enough, and on the other appearing like menacing loners.</p>
<p>Historically, the job of window-trimming had to be actively staged as masculine, if only to enforce the gender roles of susceptible female consumers on one side of the glass and the educated men manipulating their desires to lucrative effect on the other. Mannequins have often been used as stand-ins for the empty-headed &ldquo;shop girls&rdquo;.</p>
<p>Mary Blair was an illustrator for Disney, Morgenthaler and Kruse were dollmakers, Leeson was a multi-media artist. Because window dressing had to be &ldquo;masculinized&rdquo; with schools and certificates and employment rules about working at night, many of the most brilliant female window dressers had to come to the job from a different direction and not through official employment.</p>

By Women, of Women in the Mannequin Industry      

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(6987).jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1069" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543222%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-v4tl8&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">At the end of the right lane you can see a reproduction of an advertising image, a collaboration between famed British artist Allen Jones and the Swiss hosiery brand Fogal in the early 1970s. Comprising a mural that was installed at Basel train station, Jones&rsquo; project bridged the gap between art, design and commerce. A photograph of the original installation in Basel complements the display. Allen Jones' work is often (and rightfully) regarded as having problematic sexual politics in his use of gender polarity and the commodification of femininity by the mass media. His sculptures Hatstand, Table, and Chair (1969) do not make the usual separation between fine and applied arts by using mannequins as ready-mades. Instead, by making the mannequins himself, he emulates the manufacturing techniques and visual language with respect to the craft, and therefore uses a gendered meta-language which cannot be so easily dismissed.</span></p>

Allen Jones

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B21548.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543207%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-aSget&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The border between commercial display and exhibition-making has been shown to be liquid. Not only by the large number of people who act as double agents between the spheres of fine and commercial art but also those who take the essential qualities of both worlds and cross apply them to great effect. Window dressing is a discipline to be learned and mastered. During the interwar period the field exploded, with nearly every major city in Western Europe and the United States having several schools. The effect of the avant-garde was strongly felt across continents. Abstraction, constructivism, kinetic art, and surrealism, as well as technological breakthroughs and theater, were assimilated into commercial window displays. Friedrich Kielser was an important figure in this, as was the Reimann School, where Natascha Kroll was a student and teacher.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">In the postwar era, Gene Moore perfected the formula of using wit, brilliant merchandising savvy, and unconventional methods: his work continues to act as a blueprint for today&rsquo;s attention-grabbing displays. In Passer-by, Atelier E.B included the windows Moore dressed for Tiffany &amp; Co., which emulated dioramas and science displays to make the connection with ethnography. The exhibition also reflects on Mary Blair&rsquo;s work for Disney&rsquo;s It&rsquo;s A Small World in the context of ethnography, and the theme is explored further in the section ETHNOGRAPHY &amp; FUTURE EVES, which you can find in the Skylight Room. The spirit of the avant-garde could also be felt in the decor and ethos of the London shop The Pineal Eye. </span></p>

Clothes and the Discipline of Display 

<p><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed__F7A95687545.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543204%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-zuFuW&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">In the right lane of the exhibition space you can see three &ldquo;street vitrines&rdquo; with items created by Atelier E.B. These are life-size sculptures, built to resemble the type found on grand shopping boulevards such as the Kurf&uuml;rstendamm in Berlin.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The vitrines at Garage have been expertly installed by the trimmers Howard Tong and Barbara Kelly. They use tools like fishing wire and pinning to suspend the garments in anthropomorphic spatial compositions. Their skill brings a vulnerability to the sculpture, a sense of physical tension and vivaciousness, both literal and metaphorical. There is an analogy to trompe l&rsquo;oeil painting, in that both are technical skills which create illusionistic surfaces and effects, and the shallow space of the window sits somewhere between a stage set and an exhibition. And there is also an analogy to contemporary social media. Shop windows are time sensitive, with new products that will be gone by the next season, so when they are dusty or out of style, that is really thrown into relief. Window dressing is a testing ground for ideas about taste, contemporaneity, and value, which are relevant to both fashion and art, but also to culture in general. While the term &ldquo;just window dressing&rdquo; is pejorative, it can provoke and subvert.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Cleo&rsquo;s, Atelier E.B&rsquo;s mobile app, is the digital shop window of the brand. It tries to be a reflective surface in which the shopper sees themselves, as well as the product on display. Like Lynne Hershman Leeson&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bonnie&rdquo; mannequin reaching through the glass window of the department store to the viewer on the pavement in her 1976 project 25 Windows: A Portrait of Bonwit Teller, in the digital realm Atelier E.B try to dissolve the border between the producer and the consumer, recognizing that these borders are continually being renegotiated.</span></p>

Atelier E.B. Street vitrines      

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(8455).jpg" alt="" width="1067" height="1600" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543201%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-00gAz&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The combination of materials on window dressing pioneers with examples of fine art shows how this discipline crisscrosses borders. Lucy McKenzie's copy of a Meredith Frampton painting features the head of a lay figure, but it is also constructed rather like one of Gene Moore&rsquo;s Tiffany &amp; Co. windows, with both relying on the same pseudo-surreal compositional tricks. Surrealisms assimilation into mainstream culture via forms like window display was its death bell. The Frampton replica also underscores that the leitmotif of trompe l&rsquo;oeil and counterfeiting is central to Atelier E.B&rsquo;s practice.</span></p>

McKenzie, Lucy. Replica of Trial and Error, 1939 by Meredith Frampton. 

<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543198%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-X1FXG&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Fred Wilson deconstructs and reframes familiar objects and symbols, with a particular interest in the conventional display mechanisms propounded by museums and cultural institutions. In its original form, when it was made for the US Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Sacre Conversazione comprised mannequins dressed in an array of replica historical costumes, with fake designer bags offered by a live seller seated in front of the installation. The mannequins are three-dimensional replicas of figures from Renaissance paintings. In their original painted context they are isolated, but Wilson places them in relation to each other. It&rsquo;s a subversive comment on the intersection of display and commerce, the original and the fake, a continuation of the McKenzie&ndash;Frampton dialogue on the other side of the wall. Discussing the work, Wilson commented: a decorative art object is supposed to just sit there; you&rsquo;re not supposed to really think too hard about it. But I like working with such common items and luxury goods that are not considered high art, because they authentically represent a culture, good or bad. Here they also reveal an historically invisible community, but also a prejudice. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">For Atelier E.B, Sacre Conversazione embodies the overlapping narratives between history, sculpture, painting, commerce, and display.</span></p>

Fred Wilson. Sacre Conversazione.

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(45458).jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543192%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-RFs6q&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The lack of resources such as Western shop mannequins in the Soviet Union led to inventive forms of display. In Moscow, Russian fashion designers presented their work to local customers at GUM and at the Dom Modelei fashion house in two live fashion presentations a day. &ldquo;Shoppers&rdquo; could buy paper patterns of these designs and textiles from GUM, to then either sew them by hand at home or undertake the lengthy process of having them made by a state-sanctioned dressmaker. The Soviet Union, with its bureaucratic light industry, could not supply many consumer products; what it could do was supply the tools by which an individual could produce them with their own labor.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Atelier E.B look to such ingenious and resourceful methods (like those devised for the display of textiles) in their new sculpture, produced for the Moscow version of Passer-by. The sculpture&rsquo;s purpose is two-fold. Firstly, it makes a direct connection for visitors between the archive material about GUM and the present day, bringing to life the strange, faded scenes of drapes, folds, and pleats. Secondly, it illustrates Atelier E.B&rsquo;s own ethos as a brand, for example the duo&rsquo;s desire to focus on the textile rather than the styling of a garment. The artists want to tap into the complex issues surrounding Soviet fashion history: the realities of production and distribution on a meager budget, &ldquo;real&rdquo; women&rsquo;s working wardrobes, and the ideological discourse that frames fashion as the ultimate expression of the desires of the individual consumer.</span></p>

Atelier E.B. GUM

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(410909).jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543180%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Un6pU&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Right in front of Rudolf Belling's mannequin, on a sky-blue background, you can see Lacuna (Brussels/Rome) by Lucy McKenzie and Markus Proschek, one of the new works in the exhibition. The theme of the whole versus the fragment, as well as the fluctuating position of the statue-mannequin boundary, are evident in the work. Fragments of antique statues have been digitally adapted to &ldquo;wear&rdquo; pieces from Atelier E.B&rsquo;s Jasperwear collection. The Venus de Milo is considered a classical beauty largely because she is incomplete; she would be of lesser interest were she still whole. It is in the DNA of modernism to read fragmentation as intellectually and aesthetically pleasing (think, for example, of cubism&rsquo;s dissolution of the picture plane, dadaist collages&rsquo; dissection of the mass media, and Walter Benjamin&rsquo;s Arcades Project). </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">LACUNA (Brussels/Rome)</span><span lang="EN-US"> also illustrates a more insidious influence on Western notions of taste and value: the valorization of whiteness. The polychrome surface of mannequins links them to religious statuary, sex dolls, and folk art. It also evokes long-held beliefs about the subordination of &ldquo;primitive&rdquo; and non-Western cultures. The accepted idea that Greek and Roman statues were unpainted, a myth that is being slowly debunked, is part of the larger issue of classicism being willfully mischaracterized for political ends.</span></p>

 Lucy Mckenzie & Markus Proschek. LACUNA (Brussels/Rome).

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(1098981).jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543168%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-P2y1u&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Antonis&rsquo; use of statues as photographic models and Robert Couturier&rsquo;s custom-made, statue-like mannequins (as photographed by Wols) present two examples of the blurring of domains.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">These themes are combined with the World&rsquo;s Fairs and Great Exhibitions in this section because they share common ground: both process the present through the lens of the past, particularly antiquity. As an example of this, material from the 1935 Miss Universe competition, which Brussels hosted, is shown. It uses the Venus de Milo for its poster. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Art, design, architecture, and consumer culture are powerful political tools. The underlying agenda of the International Exhibition of 1925 was to promote France as the world&rsquo;s arbiter of good taste and the leading producer of beautiful things. As France&rsquo;s fashion and beauty industry produced almost as much Gross National Product as heavy industry in 1925, this was for sound economic reasons. Notions of luxury, and by extension beauty and seduction, were therefore deliberately interwoven with national identity, as they still are today. The 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris was partly a campaign by Western colonial powers (including the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands) to justify their activities at a time when the rationale behind imperialist expansion was increasingly being questioned. Here, colonialism was presented simplistically as beneficial to all, implying a natural order between colonized and colonizer. Art, design, and the applied arts were complicit in enforcing racial division; they sampled non-Western motifs as surface pattern without interest in the indigenous cultures that produced them. The World&rsquo;s Fair Exposition of 1937 was a stage for the diplomatic tensions that would soon lead to World War Two. It is remembered for the striking image of Albert Speer&rsquo;s German pavilion in an ideological face-off with Boris Iofan and Vera Mukhina&rsquo;s USSR pavilion, framing the Eiffel tower. But it was not only the Soviet Union and Germany who were waging a propaganda war. It could also be found in the British pavilion, with its scenes of cricket and fox hunting, and in the various presentations of the French.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Women were frequently used as motifs at World&rsquo;s Fairs: as national allegory in figurative statues and &ldquo;decorating&rdquo; the sites as consumers. This concealed how little women actively participated or had their everyday realities addressed.</span></p>

Statue – Mannequin Border – World’s Fairs

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Atelier-E.B.-(29898).jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1067" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543159%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-SY3ou&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">Britain Can Make It</span><span lang="EN-US">, an exhibition of industrial and product design, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1946. This show had the civic ambition of signaling a postwar return to normality and hope in the future. There are two sets of photos on display in Passer-by: the &ldquo;behind the scenes&rdquo; views, which resemble an installation of contemporary art, with mannequins lying around in confusion; and the final staging of the exhibition, polished and perfect. By showing both, two different mind-sets in terms of aesthetic taste are presented. Britain Can Make It has particular resonance in Moscow because it is similar to analogous Soviet exhibitions, where products were not actually for sale but were components in a propagandistic facade used to mask the impoverished state of the country from its citizens and the onlooking world. As at the World&rsquo;s Fairs, the provinces of art, technology, education, consumerism, and nationalism are tightly interwoven into a dream space which is deliberately ambiguous.</span></p>

Britain Can Make It

<p><img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%B7-%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8-87545454542.jpg" alt="" width="1100" height="1600" /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/760543153%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-rwrFU&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">In this section you can see two polarized positions in relation to mannequins: fashion magazines and mannequin catalogues are contrasted with ethnographic figures employed in anthropological displays in the Soviet Union. But the section starts with another kind of contrast. Two video projections show opposite histories of fashion display from very different cultures. On the right you can see a 3D shoot of traditional Iki dolls from Japan, made by the famed artisan Yasumoto Kamehachi. On the left, a documentary produced for Passer-by tells the story of Lydia Orlova, the Soviet Union&rsquo;s foremost fashion editor. These two videos present varying views on tradition and invention. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The magazines and brochures in the vitrines illustrate the moment in the late 1920s when fashion, painting, photography, illustration, and sculpture collided to produce a new aesthetic. Illustrators like Eduardo Benito, who produced covers for Vogue, connected the innovations of painters like Kazimir Malevich and sculptors like Constantin Brancusi, who abstracted and simplified the human figure, with the leading mannequin manufacturers of the day. Siegel was the first to develop stylized and abstract mannequins made from new materials. These mannequins formed part of elaborate sets at fashion fairs and in luxuriously designed sales catalogues and commercial brochures, which employed well-known photographers to showcase the mannequins modelling the clothes of famous fashion houses. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The lithe fashion models they produced could not be further from the kind of prosaic mannequin used in ethnographic displays. The mannequins you see here originate from the Russian Ethnographic Museum. They were made in the late 1920s by the Museum's artist, Konstantin Kavtaradze, who participated in field trips to Central Asia to get the types exactly right. The museum, now in its fifth or sixth wave of re-exposition, still views these mannequins as the best ones. The figures do not entice us to project our ideal selves and ultimately buy the garment they display. Their job is to reflect the typical features and &ldquo;character&rdquo; of various indigenous peoples. They often veer eerily close to taxidermy, and they are often packed densely in glass vitrines, situated somewhere between presentation and storage. This contrasts with the sense of life and vitality a more abstract display can evoke.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">In this room you can also see Lydia Orlova&rsquo;s personal archive of Soviet fashion magazines, and a sculpture of oversized hands made by Pavla Dundalkova. These hands frame the vitrine holding the fashion magazines and mannequin catalogues, to highlight their aura of luxury and prestige. Orlova&rsquo;s archive is also placed here to make the connection with contrasting fashion magazines cultures. Plus this area is good for some quiet concentration. The museological setting venerates the magazines and places them in the context of adoration they deserve. </span></p>

Ethnography and Future Eves

<div class="page" title="Page 4">Welcome to <em>Passer-by</em>, an exhibition by Atelier E.B, a fashion label run by designer Beca Lipscombe and artist Lucy McKenzie. This is an exhibition about the fruitful and reciprocal relationship fine art has had with window display and the commercial mannequin. It also looks at mannequins and display at World&rsquo;s Fairs and ethnographical museums. <em>Passer-by</em> includes a display of Atelier E.B&rsquo;s fashion design, including the duo&rsquo;s latest collection, <em>Jasperwear.</em></div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">&nbsp;</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">The title of the exhibition, <em>Passer-by</em>, acknowledges consumers of fashion not just as individuals who buy garments. Everyone who glances at shop window displays and enjoys fashion through books, magazines, exhibitions, and other means partakes in the ways fashion looks and in what it means. For Atelier E.B, the nexus of the overlap between art, design, and commerce is centered on the figure of the mannequin and in fashion display &ndash; both as modes of artistic expression and reflections of cultural change. From the World&rsquo;s Fairs and Expositions of the twentieth century to iconic department stores, ethnographic museums, and fashion retail under communism, Atelier E.B present their research into the practitioners behind these interconnected visual histories, drawing attention to and promoting a deeper understanding of their significance.</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">&nbsp;</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">The first part of the exhibition focuses on history. Tracing multiple narratives within art, design, and retail and including pieces by a broad spectrum of artists, designers, doll and mannequin-makers, fashion photographers, window trimmers, and architects, five thematic chapters present the fruits of Atelier E.B&rsquo;s rigorous, if intensely personal, research.</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">&nbsp;</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">The second part of the exhibition offers a contemporary context. Atelier E.B invited artists Tauba Auerbach, Anna Blessmann, Steff Norwood, Elizabeth Radcliffe, Bernie Reid, and Markus Selg to produce a mannequin or display device on which to present selected garments from previous fashion collections: <em>Inventors of Tradition </em>(2011), <em>Ost End Girls </em>(2013) and <em>Inventors of Tradition II </em>(2015). Each of these artists recognizes the cultural significance of clothing within their own practice and is a collaborator and customer of Atelier E.B.</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">&nbsp;</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">In the third and final part of the exhibition, Atelier E.B synthesize their findings into several new works, including a series of bespoke display vitrines created for Garage. These vitrines feature the Atelier E.B designs that are available to buy from a boutique on the ground floor of the Museum, to the left of Garage Bookshop. The duo&rsquo;s new app, <em>Cleo&rsquo;s</em>, is also exhibited in a sculptural way. The main objective of the app is to create a social network of Atelier E.B&rsquo;s clients and collectors so that they can share experiences of wearing items or discuss wider agendas.</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">&nbsp;</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">You can start your journey wherever you like, but it might be helpful to think about the exhibition design as a highway with three lanes of different types of traffic. They vary in terms of objects, topics, and the types of tartan that are attached to each lane. Atelier E.B are from Scotland, and the use of tartan is an homage to their home country. Later in this audio guide different lanes will be mentioned. Please assume that the far left lane is the one closest to the Atrium, where a part of Monica Sosnowska&rsquo;s steel sculpture is visible, and the positions of other lanes are relative to it. To start our suggested route, please go to the circular podium in the middle of the far left lane.</div>

Atelier E.B: Passer-by Mobile Guide

7-9 years 

10-14 years 

15-17 years 

0-6 years 

Architecture

Photo

Journalism

Psychology

Music

Books in English

Family

Garage Dance

Garage.txt

Garage Screen

Stream

Contemporary Critical Thought

Directors’ series

The Garage Journal

Exhibition catalogues

Research

Children's books

Garage + Ad Marginem

Seminars, Workshops and Training

Lectures & Talks

Concerts & Performances

Film Screenings

Exhibitions

Courses

Tours

Concerts & performances

Conferences

Exhibitions & projects

News

Interview

Talks

Lecture cycles

Conferences and seminars

Book presentations

Art Guide

Garage publishing program

Sponsors, patrons, and partners

Information partners

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Artguide Editions

Garage International Publishing Program

Library events

Books in english

Russian

English

Bilingual (russian/english)

Film programs

GARAGE Club

Programs for exhibitions

Events

Garage Live

Academic program

Grants

Field research

Patronship

Garage Studios

Mosaic Music

GARAGE Student

Film festival

Film distribution

Sign language

Mental disabilities

Migration

Audio description

Tactile models

Accessibility guide

Physical accessibility

GARAGE Individual

Digital accessibility

Diversity

Events at Garage

Garage publishing program and Strelka Press 

Text

Audio

Video

Feature

Guide

GARAGE Individual +1

Research laboratories

Artistic research

Translation to russian sign language

Subtitles

Adapted tours

Quiet room

Translation to uzbek, tajik, and kyrgyz

GARAGE Premium

“We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams”

Space 1520

GARAGE Circle

Temporality

Disability

Affect

Overcoming

Body

Timelessness

Non-normative body

GARAGE Collectors Circle  

Experience of the other

Otherness

Developmental disabilities

Mental health

Trauma

Personal experience

Neural networks

Language

7-11 years

Plain language

Garage Café

The computer class schedule

Mediation

Oleg Baranov Going Down

Podcasts

Shelf of the Month. Theatrе

Publishing program page

Series of meetings with residents

Open call

Shelf of the Month. Cinema

Shelf of the Month. Modern Dance

Projects <i>Oral History</i> and <i>Oral History 2.0</i>

Visitors in a wheelchair

garage-txt

Open storage

Public programs

Free

Registration required

Free for exhibition ticket holders

Paid

Booking required

Booking via phone or email is required

Booking on reception is required

Off-site projects

Architecture and design

Supervision

Museology

Philosophy

Economy

Cinematography

Critical biography

Memoirs and diaries

For Garage card holders

For children

GARAGE + Ad Marginem

GARAGE PRO

Minima

Paperback

Hardcover

Hardcover with dust jacket

Book review

Professional programs

Video review

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press. GARAGE PRO Series

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press. Minima Series

McKenzie, Lucy. Replica of Trial and Error, 1939 by Meredith Frampton.

Share