Since the launch of SHOWstudio.com in 2000, the website has championed film and the moving image as the ideal medium for fashion in the digital age. In this exclusive video with Crane.tv, director of SHOWstudio Shop Carrie Scott, explains how she hand-in-hand with founder Nick Knight, have utilised the internet and technology to deliver fashion and art - live and as it happens.
Nick Knight has forever been interested in live studio and showing the process of art as a way to not only focus upon the final polished product, but to show how the product came to be. The physical space in the downstairs of the studio, where artists are invited to come and create work whilst millions of people watch online, is intrinsic to SHOWstudio's philosophy: to demystify the artistic process.
The latest exhibition "Practice to Deceive", built around the expression, "smoke and mirrors," continues the studio's objective to develop universal themes that occur in both fashion and fine art. Typically, the studio's exhibitions take simple concepts such as "Black and White" and "The Body and Dolls," curating a collection that demonstrates the assimilation of fashion and art within these themes.
Scott is eager to point out that neither she nor Knight believe that there should not be divisions between genres, but that there are, "some really interesting threads that appear time and time again that evoke all sorts of thoughts and emotions when you see them tangled together."
"Practice to Deceive" therefore, as a collection, strives to juxtapose the literal and physical interpretation of the expression "smoke and mirrors," including iconic pictures of people smoking, elaborate mirror structures and figurative interpretations that suggest deceit and illusion - concepts that are entangled timelessly with both fashion and art.
The theme of this show then can be scene as a motif for the whole concept of the studio. By "making the intangibility of the internet tangible," SHOWstudio exposes the hidden process behind the making of art - thus blowing away the smoke and smashing the mirrors that guise it.
Text by Charlotte Rutherford for Crane.tv
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