Set up on the ‘Paris’ end of Collins street, HIGH VIS DANDY looks like your everyday construction site: heavy-duty traffic barriers, variable message sign, and rubbish skip ready to go. But when you get up close…watch out! It’s an extreme sewing workshop, bursting with powerful industrial sewing machines that rev through six seams a minute. Between instructing sewing students and taking high tea, the ‘workers’ show off their outrageously practical haute-couture high visibility workwear, demonstrating that you can still look good while you get your hands dirty. Preen and pose to the ultimate hypermacho soundtrack of your favourite Aussie cock rock, streetwise hip hop and heartfelt 80s hits.
A durational performance spanning five working days of the festival, HIGH VIS DANDY is Beau Brummell meets Bon Scott, boldly challenging the Australian definition of manliness by reappropriating that reigning symbol of rugged, anti-fashion masculinity: high visibility workwear. The installation and performance are the culmination of a long-term project involving public sewing workshops, intended to give men the skills and confidence to adapt, repair and custom-make their very own super-practical, super-stylish high visibility work vests. The workshops also provided a forum to discuss and investigate how clothing informs the construction of masculinity in contemporary Australian society.
Inspired by the artists’ own experiences in a culture where bullying and stigmatisation actively discourage men from learning sewing skills (or even taking an interest in fashion), HIGH VIS DANDY urges us to reconsider our assumptions about what it means to ‘be a man’.
Check out HIGH VIS DANDY on Facebook.
Supporters: City of Melbourne, Craft Victoria, The Keir Foundation
Artist/s:
Matthew Kneale: Project director; performer; costume maker
Daniel Koerner: Director; performer; costume maker
Jessica Daly: Costume designer; performer; costume maker
Zoe Meagher: Sound designer; performer; costume maker
Read more about the artist/s ↓
About the artist/s:
Matthew Kneale trained as a set and costume designer at the Victorian College of the Arts, graduating in 2005. Since then he has shifted his career to focus on project directing and producing live performance in public space. His project Loading Zone functioned as an art courier company / mobile performance venue delivering a diverse range of performances onto the streets of Newcastle during TINA. Kids Can Get Lost, an instructional performance on how to conduct a safe family road trip, took place in the Moonee Ponds concrete floodway underneath the Tullamarine Freeway during the 2008 Next Wave Festival.
In the second half of 2008 he received the Moonee Valley Foundation Encouragement Award to fund a creative internship with the Perth-based PVI Collective. He was recently made co-director of Quarterbred, a Sydney-based Artist Run Initiative. Matthew’s set and costume work has included designs for the Border Project Vs Macbeth, 2010, Trouble on Planet Earth, 2008, The State Opera Company of South Australia The Station and At The Statue of Venus, 2006 and Australian Dance Theatre Theatrical Trailer to Alien 5, 2008. Matthew is also proud to have designed the Black Lung Theatre logo.
Daniel Koerner is a theatre director based in Melbourne. He trained as a director at the Flinders University Drama Centre in South Australia and at the Victorian College of the Arts. He predominantly works with performers to devise work that occurs in a wide range of environments, from a traditional theatre space to the side of a freeway. Most recent in Daniel’s extensive directorial experience is Tinseltown, originally presented as part of Short and Sweet 2009. The performance earned Daniel an award for Best Direction, as well as a Full Tilt award for two weeks of creative development at the Arts Centre, the full-length result of which was presented in May. His 2006 work Kissy Kissy toured nationally and is soon to become a feature film. Daniel has been an associate of South Australian company The Border Project since its 2004 inception. His involvement has included designing, devising material and performing (Please Go Hop!, 2005), creating video (Trouble On Planet Earth & Highway Rock ‘n’ Roll Disaster, 2008), and associate directing (Disappearance, 2008). In 2006 Daniel received a Spark Mentorship to investigate contemporary theatre practice, and completed a creative internship with Brooklyn-based company Radiohole. In addition to theatre direction, Daniel has directed a number of films and video clips, including Some Place To Be by True Live (Mushroom Records, 2009) and If I Dance Will It Keep Me Warm? (2008). As a seasonal lecturer in performance at the University of Wollongong, Daniel conducts ongoing classes in technique and performance-making, with a rigorous focus on contemporary and post-dramatic work. He is also a member of the Malthouse Theatre Artistic Council.
Jessica Daly graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2007, majoring in costume design and construction. Her costume internships included work at Circus OZ, and at the Royal Ballet and Opera, London. Since graduating she has split her time between costume design and performance. In the last year she has co-designed costumes for feature film Submerge directed by Sophie Oconnor, and designed and made costumes for a range of theatre productions including Two by The Artisan Collective, The Cat’s Paw by Hoy Polloy Theatre, and The Snow Queen produced by Y.G.L.A.M. She has just finished costume design on short film Auditioning Fanny directed by Mia-Kate Russel. Jess is the co-founder of performance art dance troupe The V Dentatas, where she directs, choreographs, designs and makes all the costumes. This dance duo produce short works revolving around themes of gender and feminism, subverting traditional forms of burlesque and dance. For the last two years they have performed in venues around Melbourne including Toff in Town and the Espy. In 2008 they toured to Sydney to perform at the Oxford Art Factory, and in 2010 will perform at Lilyworld as part of the Big Day Out festivals in Melbourne and Sydney.
Melbourne-based artist Zoe Meagher creates fun, mish-mash performance and installation that reflects her interdisciplinary background. Since graduating from the University of Melbourne in 2008, she has been involved in projects ranging from musical composition and sound design to devised performance and photographic posing. As one quarter of artists’ group High Vis, she performs as a ‘dandy’ and helps run hyper-masculine sewing workshops. She recently completed a two-week residency in Sydney as part of the Tiny Stadiums Festival, during which she created an accumulative public installation and an interactive performance based on shopping-centre photography and vanity portraits.
More information:
Project website: http://www.highvis.org/Home.html →
