Lizzy Levy

 

I work across media using sculpture, print, and paint to express conceptual ideas. I draw from my former career in the fashion industry, and integrated those experiences in processing inherited, worn, and handcrafted garments. My work seeks out histories beneath the veneer of fashion, questioning the drives of consumption and desire. The female figure is central to my practice, as I attempt to expose restrictions, constraints, the bondage of oppression, and the distorting priorities of capitalism. I question place, identity, ideas of home and belonging, suggesting that our clothing conveys significant messages. The work I produce proposes to unearth the past and challenge conventional conceptions whilst throwing light into the darkest corners of a harsh trade. Clothing is a powerful mechanism of expression yet clothing can also divide us socially and economically. Status, power and heritage are often represented via the fabrics and labels that cover our skin. Clothing constructs a cultural entity in time and space, and its very nature reflects specific historic, political, social, economic, environmental, globalised shifts and transformations. Yet Clothing is undeniably an intimately, individual and sensually expressive material. I am interested in the personal embedded within the seduction of cloth. Via experience in close family relationships I see the comfort of fabric. It is untaught, inherent, in us, to feel the satin slip of a label or caress of silk on skin. Marks of a life, imprinted upon a worn garment. Elbows warp a knitted weave the clothes become us. I am interested in this, the natural, born from our world, grown and woven, adorned and adored. Unraveling the human story lying beneath the fashion veneer.