JANE BEAR
The Journey
(2017-18)
WINDOWSPACE
February 2019
Suitcases and shoes seem to go hand in
hand – there is something nostalgic about each – places travelled, steps taken
– that the ‘foot-work’ of Jane Bear should follow the suitcases of Johny Salama
is a WINDOWSPACE ‘sequence’ of some interest.
Jane Bear speaks of her ‘shoes’ as
‘slippers’ her word offering a gentility to thoughts of feet and footwear – in
the ‘west’ we have the luxury of gradations of comfort, styles, fashions, the indulgence
of accumulations, however to this writer there is something achingly poignant
about the hollow in the Bear slipper (where the foot goes), that makes of these
footwear items something more than mere practical, be they slipper or shoe.
Something to do with the art of casting, the unique print of the foot(?) Then
the yeti comes to mind, the footfall in snow, the trace, the shape, the
mark-making, the leaving behind. Mud follows snow.
Undoubtedly as Bear presents these
slippers they form a family of some
kind, one she sees as a progression, something orderly, rather not the unruly
of family, instead the positive of progress, from young to old or vice-versa. She
states:
Travelling the journey through various stages of life from our first
steps to the arrival at our final destination slippers represent the different
phases of life punctuated with events and circumstances, most of which cannot
be foretold. Each pair inviting the viewer to contemplate each different
stage of life’s journey.
Whether progress, progression, or retreat
to simpler (better?) times when shapes of functional items were lovingly molded
by hand, unique as any artwork, as these slippers are, the sense of something
else remains – haunting, beyond the ‘mere’ functional. Is it art?
Where and who offers shoes as art – Paris
and Paris, Milan, Milan – how to decipher the collusion of art and fashion that
fuel the indulgent churn that is ‘high’ this and that. Is there a ‘message’
somewhere?
If the Dutch can make wooden shoes so Turkish-Cypriot
Hussein Chalayan can make wooden skirts. It was 2000 – a very tricky year by
any estimation:
“I feared things going
wrong, but the risk was so worth taking," said … Chalayan shortly after
his A/W00 show. If anything qualifies
as a risk, it’s transforming a piece of furniture made from wood into a piece
of clothing … in front of a live audience … Chalayan did at London Fashion Week
in February 2000: he transformed four chair covers and a coffee table into four
dresses and a wooden skirt.
Drawing
on themes as disparate as architecture, aerodynamics, space and religion,
Chalayan has earned a reputation for being London’s cerebral designer, marked
by his unique talent for combining philosophical ideals with wearable clothes.
On a stage that
resembled a living room – complete with four chairs, a table, a flat screen
television, several vases and pots – the designer presented his collection …
This show bordered on a 1970s "happening": four models wearing grey
shift-dresses approached these chairs, removed the covers and then put them
onto their bodies. The last model wearing a similar dress delicately stepped
into the middle of the table, lifted it up and transformed it into a skirt.
This
wasn’t, however, an exercise in theatricality for the sake of theatricality …
The
show was inspired by refugees of war, people forced to flee their homes,
carrying their worldly possessions on’ their backs. Given the designer’s
Turkish Cypriot heritage and the conflict that occurred in that area during the
60s and 70s, this inspiration has a particularly personal resonance …’
And
then there was Manolo Blahnik – whose parents thought he should be a diplomat,
who enrolled for law and politics, and graduated in architecture and literature
then moved to Paris to study art at
the École des Beaux-Arts and Stage Set Design at the Louvre Art School … 2000, Blahnik,
who had learnt shoe-making from his mother … launched a virtual reality online
show room featuring 3D models of his shoes … his entire collection was sold in a
few weeks.
oOo
Bear talking to her last installation at WINDOWSPACE 2017
It is
this wider world stage that this writer detects behind Bear’s ‘slippers’ – the
alchemy of materials, an understanding of the import of material quintessence
on a journey … a journey, or a progression, that asks the viewer to think
beyond the apparently mundane act of one foot placed beyond another, though
such steadfast tread is what moves the world and the person on the human quest
for safety, knowledge, warmth, humanity. Bear’s work moves us on a journey of
material appreciation, of asking ‘how’ of fundamental materials, shapes and
purposes, while hinting at the haunting urges and absences that make art.
AS
Another 'progression' -
'pots' of felt made by workshop participants under Bear's guidance, 2017
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