T-Shirts As Wearable Art: The Outpost Project (VIDEO)

There's a T-shirt revolution brewing in Australia, where the T-shirts are art, the artists are men, and the male artists all wear T-shirts. In a video produced by NEXT and aMBUSH, Australia's overgrown boy artists explain why the T-shirt is today's medium of choice for a generation of hungry artists who used to want to make album covers. Turns out there aren't any album covers left to make (internet's fault). Shirts foster a comparable aesthetic, and are cheap and expressive.

Like a good T-shirt, the artists are cheerful and down-to-earth (except Brett Chan, who wears a short white wig on top of his long black hair, and is subsequently our favorite), though no one mentions the apparent dearth of women designers. A few seem bemused by just how much they love T-shirts (and comic books, and sneakers, and skateboarding). Others, like the one awesomely American guy, are aggressively pro-T.

The video is part of the Outpost Project -- a month-long street showcase of more than 1000 T-shirts by 150 artists on a magical-sounding place in Australia called Cockatoo Island. Alongside rad modern designs that Threadless should really look into (hidden pouches inside the sleeves!), the showcase includes 20 "T-shirts of the future." As exciting as the thought of widespread bamboo shirts are, we're hoping by then the biggest change is there are some women designers. That cock-and-balls shirt at 2:52 can't go unchallenged!

WATCH:

NEXT: The future of T-shirt graphics from T-world on Vimeo.

(via Gizmodo)

Comments

[bmermaid]

11:08 PM on 11/11/2011

T-shirts are the perfect gifts. I give them to my Dad (in his 80s & wears t-shirts every day), my siblings, my kids, and for every occasion. I epecially like Mental Floss. T-shirts are much more thoughtful than money.