Exhibitions

Vivienne Westwood | The Personal Collection
Christie’s
14th – 28th June 2024
The London exhibition drew 20,000 visitors, with both auctions attracting bidders from around the globe, from public institutions to Millennial and Gen Z admirers of Vivienne Westwood’s eponymous fashion house and supporters of her plight as an environmental campaigner. The atmosphere of the live auction echoed Dame Vivienne’s energetic spirit and determination, with competitive bidding in the room, on the telephones and via Christie’s LIVE.

Spanning four decades of one of the most influential British designers of modern times, each item in the exhibition represented a significant moment in Vivienne Westwood’s life and career. The sale of the collection marks a unique moment in fashion history, celebrating the legacy of this trailblazing designer, punk icon, environmental campaigner, and philanthropist.

Diva
V&A Museum
24th June – 10th April 2024
DIVA celebrated the power and creativity of iconic performers, exploring and redefining the role of ‘diva’ and how this has been subverted or embraced over time across opera, stage, popular music, and film.

Do You Buy This?
Ugly Duck Gallery
3rd – 6th August 2023
Do You Buy This? showcases commodified feminist objects, considering the duality between critiquing corporate cooption and supporting feminist practice. We look forward to welcoming audiences to explore the complexities of operating within a capitalist system and to exercise our spending power in feminist ways.

We are exhibiting commodities produced in corporate environments alongside works created by independent artists. All works have been sold or are intended for sale, and all explore feminism, especially its fourth wave’s intersectional focus.

Students of the History of Design MA Programme at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art (Amber Kim, Cas Bradbeer, Sufiyeh Hadian and Zarna Hart) have curated this showcase, selecting a broad range of commodified fourth-wave feminist objects made from 2012 to the present day.

“Our aim as curators is to explore financially supporting feminist practice while remaining critical of the capitalist commodification of feminism. We invite our visitors to engage with this discourse”

https://uglyduck.org.uk/event/do-you-buy-this/

Dream. Snap. Freedom: Radical Play Through Photography
Four Corners Gallery
16th November – 18th December 2020

Dream. Snap. Freedom: Radical Play Through Photography’ is a month-long online exhibition and programme I conceived and curated with Four Corners Gallery. Radical play refers to an avenue of activism that prioritises joy and solidarity. Examples like Notting Hill Carnival, the Pride Festival, and other events where dancing, dressing up, taking up space and celebrating identity, offer another view of activism, that is often excluded from mass media coverage. 

The exhibition highlights three pillars of identity politics; LGBTQ+, anti-racism and feminist ‘radical play’. The research and chosen works draw both from the Half Moon Photography Workshop, the Camerawork exhibition archive at Four Corners as well as from a series of commissioned contemporary photography works, creating an inter-generational dialogue with work by upcoming and graduate photographers.
Read more here.

Embodying The Character
Central Saint Martins
1st May – 29th April 2020

My first exhibition project as an MA student of Culture, Criticism, and Curation at Central Saint Martins titled ‘Embodying The Character’ is inspired by the influential work of theatre maverick Jeanetta Cochrane (1882-1957) and the collection of costume and set design materials in her archive at CSM’s Museum & Study Collection.

The body is a blank canvas in the realm of performing arts. In this theatre, the body is manipulated – through actions, gestures, mannerisms, speech, diction, tone, projection– and the actor comes alive on stage as a character. Costuming is more than a decorative touch. Costuming helps to dictate and communicate a character’s presence. This project was born out of a curiosity to investigate the ways in which costume and fashion design effects and influences a performance; it is an exploration of the sartorial, the theatrical, and the moments these elements coalesce.

Read more here.

Analogue Perspectives
Concrete Hermit x Lomography Gallery
3rd July – 16th August 2012

I curated and hand-picked this show of seven ‘non-digital’ artists to showcase new works in the basement gallery of the Lomography store in Spitalfields, in collaboration with Concrete Hermit.

See more here.

Debut Contemporary Gallery
Multiple Exhibitions and private views
August 2011 – June 2012

I scouted upcoming artists and new work for the gallery and managed their website, social media as well as all events.

See more here.

Current Research

Feminist dress history
Fashion image-making and visual culture
Material culture and adornment
The commodification of activism
Corsetry and the politics of the body
Contemporary luxury fashion narratives
Digital feminism and protest dress
Fashion as cultural text and identity construction

Selected Publications

Design History Society

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