Rhett Leinster
Alexander Marstrand
‘Armour’ includes paintings and works on paper by Rhett Leinster, a dress by designer Alexander Marstrand and a newly commissioned photograph by Valeria Herklotz.
In his treatment of images, Rhett slows processes down to expose transitions, with a sensitivity that underlines the political nature of various, apparently inconsequential material decisions. He depicts objects that are ambiguous, that both protect and conceal. Simultaneously, there is a delicacy, a sense of things coalescing.
Alex’s ‘Flag’ dress (2018) is sculptural when worn on the body and yet lies perfectly flat. He designed its folds and darts for this purpose, using fine silk and a papery-thin, heat-tolerant PVC found on lampshades, which allows the dress to be ironed. He consciously employed material opposites, both in terms of feel and expense. Inspired by shirting, the dress plays with the material hierarchy between pre-folded shirts and the plastic wrapping that contains them or stiffens their cuffs and collars. He twisted a shirt pattern from a point in the armhole to destabilise its form and to explore its concave spaces; the other cuts had to compensate in turn all the way around. There is a certain potential in an inanimate dress, laid down on the floor. Without a model or a hanger, or any other method of display, it can become material again, until it is picked up or worn. Alex chose the colour because of his mother, who often wears red accessories, a flower in her hair for example. She told him that when the model walked the runway show the sound of the PVC was like a flag in the wind.
While making this exhibition, we were considering fashion and the movement between value systems in art and design. ‘Armour’ is about the rearranging of places and shifts in form, about filters and layers, containers and barriers, the metabolising of materials and images. There is an interplay between elements that are moving away from the body, moving away from the meaning a body ascribes to them.
Valeria’s photograph, Fleur (2021), was commissioned in response to the other works. She often looks for small gestures in the behaviour of the people who she photographs, gestures that can become something transgressive in an image. Her photograph could have been a source for Rhett, something that preceded and influenced his process, and yet it is entirely new. She brings a figure into the room.
