North: Identity, photography, fashion

British curators Lou Stoppard and Adam Murray decided to explore identity, culture and background of the North of England.
From revue: "North: Identity, photography, fashion" explores the way the North of England is depicted, constructed and celebrated in select photographs, artworks and fashion collections. The show brings together collective visions of the North, unpicking themes that appear regularly in design and media.

Featured objects include documentary work dating back over eighty years, and fashion media from the last thirty years. The ways in which the realities captured in the early projects have become tropes, rehashed and recreated year on year, season on season, is considered.

With this in mind, this exhibition is both about the style and cultural heritage of the North, and the ways in which ideals of it — the clothes, the music, the smells, the houses, the men, the women, the communities — have spread and, in turn, been shaped by others through visual representations.

The cultural output of the North has had a global influence. For many, the influence of the North relates to highly personal reflections or formative experience — their designs or artworks pay tribute to the heroes of their youth, the streets they used to walk or the characters they once wished to emulate.

A big attention in the exhibition is given to gender problems. The aspects of Nothern culture that are most regularly taken up by the fashion press tend to relate mostly to subculture, music and sport. Therefore, a highly masculine, heteronormative and, often, oppressively white image dominates. Men are shown as active and bold, while women are frequently shown in domestic settings or in the role or carers.

Photographer Alice Hawkins is full of respect for her subjects and often plays with or challenges these cliches, celebrating the routines and rituals of British women. She seeks to shoot women "who don’t confirm to a normal notions of beauty. I admire North-British women — they are audacious in their appearance and behavior. They push what it is to be feminine beyond the realms of normal. Some people may consider them to look tasteless or tacky but I think they are dignified and I am completely genuine with my admiration and representation of them in my work".

At the exhibition you can find various video content, designer goods, clothes, interview with modern designers, photographies, photo-books telling about original culture and way of life the North of England.

North: Identity, photography, fashion

Open Eye Gallery
Liverpool
6 January — 29 March 2017