Constraint
19 September 2003 - 11 January 2004
Wolsey Art Gallery

How are you feeling right now?
Are your jeans a bit too tight?
Is your shirt collar scratching your neck?
Maybe it's time to realise how much your clothes are constraining you!

Constraint brought together new work by Nicola Donovan, Kei Ito and Madeleine Millar which was especially commissioned by the Wolsey Art Gallery. These works focused on the constraints of wearing clothes and were inspired by Ipswich Museums and Galleries costume collection.

The project started in Spring 2002 when the artists were invited to visit Ipswich Museum and Christchurch Mansion to look at the collection of costumes. For the next eighteen months ideas developed and the artwork evolved. Each artist interpreted the brief differently.

Kei Ito is a fashion designer and used a dressmakers approach to the project, focusing on how the items in the collection were made. She was inspired by the folds, tucks and gatherings of the dresses from the collection. For Constraint, Ito created works which reference the historical with a distinctly modern twist, focusing on how the cut of clothes constrain the body.

Nicola Donovan was inspired by the Georgian bonnets in the collection, concentrating on the physical effects that the long brims have on sight, hearing and speech. Donovan created an installation of objects and sound; strains of gossip can occasionally be heard in the gallery, taken from Nicola's wild and hilarious 'girls' nights in'.

Madeleine Millar trained and works as a Theatre Designer, and more recently as a TV Costume Designer for the BBC's Last of the Summer Wine. For Constraint, Madeleine made found metal sculptures inspired by the corsets in the collections. Through her work Millar explores the meanings of corsetry and what it might tell us about attitudes towards the female body, sexuality, fashion and dress codes.

This project was part of the Raft consortium which has been funded by Arts Council England lottery funding. RAFT was coordinated by Linda Theophilus. The RAFT galleries are Wolsey Art Gallery, Ipswich; firstsite, Colchester; Kings Lynn Art Centre and Norwich Gallery.

Constraint was a springboard for All Dressed Up, a major project of costume and textile activities throughout Christchurch Mansion.

Extract from Essay The culture of the body and the body of culture by Jo Entwistle (University of Essex):

“The body and dress are the focus of intense social and moral interest. Inappropriately dressed we are open to censure or criticism. The man at a formal event without a suit and tie stands to be excluded, or at the very least may incur the disapproving looks of others. The woman wearing a low-cut top risks being seen as sexually available and, if she is older, as ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. The moral undertones of dress are explored in the popular TV series What not to wear: implicit and sometimes explicit in Susanne and Trinny’s analysis is that wearing inappropriate clothes is akin to a moral failing that begs the question ‘what sort of a person wears that!’ be it a mini-skirt that sends out inappropriate sexual signals or a tired old jumper that seems to indicate a laziness and lack of care. Thus, while dress is the product of social codes and speaks volumes as to our social location, it is the individual who must manage their dress so as to ‘fit in’ to a particular culture.”

”Constraint is a common feature when thinking about all dress, even the contemporary forms of clothing we feel we have freely chosen to wear. When looking at Nicola Donovan’s elaborate bonnets or Madeleine Millar’s corsets and bustles, or Kei Ito’s elaborately stitched coats, think not how odd or extreme they seem to you; instead, examine how that pair of jeans you are wearing feel a bit too tight and pinch your waist or force you to suck your stomach in, or how your shirt collar scratches your neck or how your skirt needs constant adjustment to prevent it riding up. Perhaps you are deliberating over what outfit to wear for a first date, a job interview, wedding or other important function. Your dress speaks volumes about the ways in which your body must routinely accommodate social, moral and perhaps even religious constraints.”

Click here for information about accompanying resource CD