Body Future

BACKGROUND: Informed by bioart, speculative design and creative practitioners including Oron Katz, Lucy McCrae and Helen Storey, Body Future explores ways for fashion and textile practitioners to work with bodily materials in a time of diminishing resources. CONTRIBUTION: The exhibition features creative practice research by designer Tarryn Handcock and artist Alice Potts. Handcock’s work includes an array of unique composite materials made from human biomatter and environmental particulate while Potts grows crystals on garments using human sweat. Presented as images, films and artefacts, these material propositions are products of the Anthropocene. Body Future forms part of Handcock’s ongoing study of relationships between human bodies and durational dress, which includes the 2017 exhibition of The Dust Project. Body Future extends on aims to stimulate public discussion around the ethics of fashion however the key research contribution differs from earlier work: by intermingling biomaterials and dress, the work in this exhibition demonstrates the potential for fashion to contribute meaningfully to a sustainable future by proposing renewable, adaptable biomaterial approaches; it presents a probable sustainable future of bodies ‘as’ garments. SIGNIFICANCE: Exhibited at Design Tasmania for the international arts festival MONA FOMA curated by Brian Ritchie, the research highlights the potential for fashion to contribute to designing material culture and place. By highlighting the unique makeup of body-materials in the exhibition, the research is also significant as a mode of creative data visualisation, and used as evidence to support the argument for sustainable policies when meeting with state and federal ministers at Design Tasmania. Coverage for this exhibition also included a public artist talk, article in Art Guide Australia and interview on ABC radio, as well as international publicity through MONA FOMA.