Nika Danielska

Nika Danielska makes exoskeletal costume, alien or insect-like carapaces.

"For 15 years I have created sculptural costumes and clothing that can not be worn. My field of interest is the human body and the various forms it can take. That is why my projects are sometimes called exoskeletons: they are complex, intricate and necessarily symmetrical. My new project is inspired by radiolarians - tiny organisms that inhabit the world's oceans. Their skeletons have a complex, architectural form. Some radiolarians contain algal symbionts - organisms that live inside a foreign body and do not harm it, but help. This idea inspired me to think of the exoskeleton as a form of protecting the subtle life, which is hidden under a solid structure." Nika Danielska

Eve Kann

Eve Kann's design for Queen Herodias from Salome the opera by Richard Strauss.  The man-made fabric was manipulated with a heat gun to create a look that would represent a proud, hard, and unsympathetic queen. Eve has just graduated from Nottingham Trent University in costume design.

Lydia Hann

Above: photograph by Christina Kai-lan Arbenz, Below: photograph by Laurence Winram 

Lydia Hann 's costume creations from a project based on 'Galoshins'; a Scottish folk play tied to the Halloween and Hogmanay tradition of guising. The costumes are created to look naive and homespun. Exaggerated silhouettes old knitting and masks conceal the players identity from his audience.

Above: Lydia's model Elspeth Chapman relaxing between shows in her base layer of body morphing costume.

Annelies Henny and Hannah Sullivan

With Force and Noise (teaser) from hannah on Vimeo.

The images above are from an embroidered costume created in collaboration between performance artist Hannah Sullivan and costume designer Annelies Henny for a performance called 'With Force and Noise'. Hannah has been researching and exploring the emotion 'anger' and has come to understand it as a combination of biological motivation and a socially complex entity.
Anger is an emotion that is bound up with our perceptions of madness and often dismissed but it is a powerful force, a strong often ugly part of  our humanity, too often neglected, behind more socially palatable emotions like fear and love.
Through working with ideas for the costume Hannah found herself suddenly in a world of craft.

"I was led to a world of craft and textile that opened a whole new angle on the emotion of anger. This angle is that anger motivates us to make something visible or witnessed, a possible route for this is what I am calling radical craft." Hannah Sullivan

                                         Image above:Jack Offord

"Hannah came to me with lots of research around anger and we worked together in the studio translating it into a costume, then Hannah did lots of drawing and I translated that into embroidery... " Annelies Henny

Elvita Brazdylytė

Elvita Brazdylytė amazingly simple but startling costume using great lengths of plastic from the head to the lighting rig of the stage.

Chiara Mauri

Very disturbing costume and makeup design by Chiara Mauri especially the ones with illuminated eyes created for  the music video for woostudio Revolution, Stasi degli Artemista.

Veronica Durisova and Laura Storcelova

Love the drama of these figures in the skyscape and landscape Veronica Durisova and Laura Storcelova produced the bodypaint /costume for this dance performance stretching the body shape and stature, and ontrasting the painted skin with full voluminous skirts. I would love to see the film.

Clarina Benzzola: Inside Out

I am compelled by the strangeness and wonder of the work of Clarina Benzzola who creates costume as part of performance, exhibition, video and installation. They are amazing often grotesque and shocking and inspirational in their challenging concepts, textures and shapes. So this is the first of a few posts that I want to write to share her work.
Inside Out 2005 and 2008

"We are vessels filled with thoughts and feelings. Most of them we never become aware of because there's no place for them in our rational minds. They seem childish, inappropriate and too strange. As years go by, we loose track of all those little voices, which we keep shoving into the dark chambers of our unconsciousness. We succumb to our social responsibilities."

"In Inside-Out, I illustrate the tragedy of an individual loosing the connection with oneself. The entire mass of unexpressed emotions has accumulated and grown into an unbearable burden. When the drama becomes intensified to the extent that even breathing becomes difficult, the protagonist gives up control and lets all seams burst. Songs of longing and sadness slip out along with fantastic creatures of all shapes and colours. Having welcomed all aspects of self, any protective shield becomes unnecessary." Clarina Benzzola