Guest blog post by
Lara Johnson-Wheeler
Since the beginning of his career in the early 1980’s, Judy Blame has become a name synonymous with an aesthetic resistance against certain conformist elements of popular culture. Propelled by a motivation to develop his oeuvre of radical imagery, the accessories designer, art director and fashion stylist has opened his first major solo exhibition this month at the ICA.
The show is immediately striking; distinctive elements of punk Britain juxtaposed against shiny, glossy high fashion imagery appear in collage and mixed media. The exhibition is presented as a montage, collating artefacts, jewellery, clothing, editorial work and sketches. The result is a show that appears to be a tactile make up of the cloth of the creative polymath.
Blame’s visual representation of his craft collective, The House of Beauty and Culture, incorporated collaborative works from the individuals involved including John Galliano, Rei Kawakubo and Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton. Blame founded the collective with John Moore in 1985 and the piece depicts the sense of unity from the artists involved. The now iconic Louis Vuitton jumpers and jackets with rope print taken from the drawings of late designer, Christopher Nemeth hang from furniture by Frick & Frack.
Bold pops of neon pink, green and metals punctuate the works, but this piece utilises softer neutrals. Earthy brown garments and feathered necklaces retaliate against the concept of luxury as insinuated in the inclusion of scattered coins and broken statuettes.
Other key pieces include necklaces made from lingerie and loo chains. The exhibition effectively portrays Blame’s dual purpose in fashion, to both invent and to intervene. Use of discarded everyday items with the finest of that high fashion has to offer creates Blame’s own unique form of iconoclastic counterculture.
Judy Blame: Never Again at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
