Serena Partridge
We are drawn to the beauty in objects and
imbue these curios with significance. There is something about Serena
Partridges tiny constructions that draw us in and speaks of that inherent
appreciation of such things. Partridge’s own fascination is for historical
European costume. She is drawn to the narrative of the flamboyant fashions
paraded by the wealthy through history and what happens to them as they move
from haute couture to artifact. Expressions of status, vanity and frivolity are
documented, studied and become the domain of scholarship and academia. The work
is commentary rather than confrontation. There is no judgment, but an
acceptance of our ability to revere the nonsensical and be seduced by the
sparkly.
Partridge is not concerned with producing
historically accurate replicas. She distorts form and plays with scale and proportion
to create caricatures of fashion objects, emphasizing their superficiality and
futility. These follies are then presented with invented provenance and
displayed as museum acquisitions in a fictional collection. By establishing
their antiquity we are left to imagine the stories behind these objects. Their
diminutive scale removes them from the ‘real’ world and in to the realms of
fantasy and fairytale.
Serena developed her love of working in the
small scale while studying design crafts at art school in Hereford in the late 1990s.
“Half way through my first year, I
started making gloves, after I came across a pair in Hay-on-Wye, which set me
off in that direction….” This initiated her continuing interpretation of flamboyant
fashions paraded by the wealthy élite, such as 16th century Venetian platforms or
the superfluous coiffures supported by Marie Antoinette. Her work mixes antique
fabric and trimmings with any material that will achieve the desired effect:
kid gloves are reborn as elongated shoes and a fragmented wedding veil becomes
the filling of a six-tier gateau, while heels are carved in wood and coiffures
are fashioned from strands of fine silk.
