ANNA SANDE
a life in T-shirts (now til then)
WINDOWSPACE
March 2019
Sande -T-shirts from various eras
Once upon a time, at an inner city
university, under their compulsory elective curriculum, there was an amazing
subject offered – its title: DRESS, ROLE & STATUS. Think upon these three
words for a moment and you might gather a whiff of the potential.
For a while I was a lucky
‘facilitator’ of said subject – I write ‘facilitator’ because the students did
most of the work. They seemed to enjoy the subject and came up with some
mind-boggling information and images in their presentations. I learnt a lot.
Did you know that under the ‘banner’ body
modification, some modification-devotees go to the extreme ‘length’ of
amputation. That’s right: tattoos, piercing
and amputation. The extremes of ‘fashion’ are just that.
Did you know that food ‘down your
front’ is associated with ageing. What of Chinese foot-binding (are stilettos a
contemporary equivalent!), and the crucial role of colour in dress – wrong
colour and you could lose your life, in some eras, in some countries! The
humble t-shirt was honoured with a presentation too. That I could understand – the
human billboard – but initially ‘the space’ was blank, occupied only by the
mildly rippling six-pack of James Dean, and Marlon Brando, and the curves of
the gorgeous young women of the French New Wave.
Having taken print-making in my own
elective studies long before, I had the tools to play around with ‘the moving
billboard’, consequently I have quite a collection of my own efforts of ‘speaking
out’ – a collection that covers decades, and issues, most long-forgotten. The
t-shirt is a kind of social time-capsule, along with much else to do with
‘dress’. Who could forget the Japanese couple and their T-shirts in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989).This installation celebrates the up-front T and the social history it tells.
Thank you to Allison McClaren for assistance and loan of 'the lady'.
AS
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