Materialbyproduct ~ Lace By Design

Materialbyproduct. Lace By Design Performance. Photo: Julie Clarke, 2010.

Materialbyproduct: Lace By Design Performance, NGV. Photo: Julie Clarke 2010.

I visited NGV International this afternoon to see the small but exquisite Lace in Fashion exhibition, which included fifty examples of dresses and lace from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Local designers MATERIALBYPRODUCT did a short performance called Lace By Design, which was one of the events in this year's State of Design Festival but also an appropriate accompaniment to the NGV exhibition. MATERIALBYPRODUCT ~ Susan Dimasi and Chantal Kirby, taking lace as their inspiration, created a performance exploring the use of delicate and seductive fabrics. The young woman with flaming red, Medusa-like hair ~ evoking the alluring figure of Sandro Botticelli's Venus, lifted herself from the cascading river of material in which she lay and was dressed by another in the remaining fabric that hung from the screen. She then proceeded to undress and dress herself in beautiful garments evenly spread across the floor. The performance and its surrounds was a feast for the eye, for it was cleverly staged on the second floor of the gallery, which sports 17th and 18th Century European Decorative Arts and Painting.