"DRESS UP" HANDMADE DRESSES
Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne. VIC.
"The Body " Group Show
Effie Williams Artwork:
"Dress Up" (Wearable Artworks) Installation April 2014
Artist Statement:
Effie Williams is a Ballarat Artist who makes honest and expressive figurative works that are a combination of two-dimensional and sculptural forms and currently as wearable artworks. Vibrant colour and gestural, playful, figurative imagery have been a constant theme with her work. Williams draws influenced from her experience of performance, and artful fashion and brings a fresh vibrant manner to the creating of her wearable artworks. She also works figuratively with Soft Sculpture, Ceramics, Found Object, Drawing and Painting.
Her current installation ‘Dress Up’ is an installation of hanging dresses creating a dance of pure colour and drawing.
The imagery is expressive and gestural and radiates a human quality.
Each dress is two sided and hand-painted with ink on hemp fabric and sewn together as wearable artworks.
The painterly brushwork creates energy and playfulness that the individual might express when wearing the dress.
“Dress Up” is about dressing the body as an individual by wearing a dress sewn and painted by hand.
Williams believes it is important to remember the individual while we live in a world of commercial dominance.
“Dress Up” is a work that aims to be immersive and approachable in order to reach the viewer on an intimate and wholesome level.