Link to first Clayton-Gouthro page
Link to more photographs of Clayton-Gouthro's work
ABOVE: A scene from Cecile Clayton Gouthro's work Connecting at an Unknown Rate at Gallery One One.
FROM AN ARTIST'S STATEMENT BY CECILE CLAYTON-GOUTHRO:
Like a lover's touch, clothing connects most intimately with the
wearer, caressing or constricting with each movement, and like a
lover's memory, clothing retains evocative sensations long after the
lover has left. What remains within the empty shell, the constricting
fabric, the colours and conforming seams, is the essence of the
person who wore them. Clothing is the language for each
individual's performance piece; we dress to conform, to call out for
attention, to protect our fragility, to parade our status, to show who
we think we are and to hide who we don't want to be.
The language of clothing is culture-specific. In the Western world it
has developed through the fashion system, tracing hundreds of
years of change and integration that reflect a wide range of
socioeconomic and cultural events. To the trained eye, that history
is easily recognizable within current styles, for fashion is full of
recycling: it hauls around past elements like necessary baggage.
These elements hold keys to the language of clothing, they retain
past meaning and present them in new interpretations. Take
shoulder pads for example: they were a product of the nineteenth-century
industrial revolution, when evidence of a man's status
became sober and the sober-coloured suit became representative
of the new power individual, the business man. Whereas previously,
somber colours and minimally-adorned clothing had depicted men
of lesser status, as opposed to the more colourful and lavish court
dress, now the power shifts in society promoted the no-nonsense
and efficient aspects of less ostentatious dressing. In place of
adornment, impressive structure paralleled the imposing
architecture of the day. Shoulder pads became the foundation for a
new shape - massive shoulders which could handle the weighty
affairs of power. They remained in the domain of men's wear only.
Woman did not need them.
One hundred years later the situation had changed. The Western
world had hardly recovered from losing so many young men in the
first World War when a second devastating, man-hungry conflict
occurred. Woman were needed to carry on men's work on the home
front and fashion did its own part by giving women big shoulders -
incorporating shoulder pads into everything from coats to dressing
gowns. That fashion expired shortly after the war. It did not begin
again until the 1980s' "Maggie Thatcher/iron woman women in the
boardroom era" - once again paralleling the adoption of hitherto
men's roles that had initiated their original appropriation in the
forties.
Gallery One One One, School of Art, Main Floor, FitzGerald Building, University of Manitoba Fort Garry campus, Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 TEL:204 474-9322 FAX:474-7605 For information please contact Robert Epp
eppr@ms.umanitoba.ca
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