Claire Barrow by Sarah Piantadosi
At this year’s London Fashion Week, Claire Barrow staged ‘The Retro-Spective’, a mock exhibition that placed her illustrative knitwear and conical painted-canvas gowns in a museum context. Complete with plinths and captioned plaques offering titles and material compositions, there was even a fake gift shop with a revolving postcard stand and tongue-in-cheek Barrow-branded merchandise. The questions she was asking were clear: As a fashion designer, can she also be an artist? Is it possible to create original clothes that are free from the shackles of period-specific, Instagram-saturated references? And can clothes act as a medium to explore our anthropological instincts and concerns?
The answer to this last point, if you haven’t guessed it, is yes. But after returning from Paris for the sales of the collection, those questions re-emerged as she prepared to open her first solo art exhibition, ‘The Bed, The Bath & The Beyond’, at M. Goldstein Gallery in London. Nestled in a nearby café in Hackney, Barrow discusses the ideas and themes that inspired her. “Cleanliness and godliness,” she says, straight off the bat. “It started with thinking about how staying spiritually connected is one of the hardest things you can be today,” she says, referring to what she perceives as a general cynicism in contemporary society. “It’s hard to have faith these days. I feel like myself and some of my friends take life for granted and think we’re invincible. We assume that nothing bad will happen to us and that we’ll be fine no matter how much we drink, eat and fail to look after ourselves.”
‘It’s hard to have faith these days. I feel like myself and some of my friends take life for granted and think we’re invincible’
Claire Barrow, Untitled, 2016, Ink on paper, Courtesy of M. Goldstein and an image from her AW ’16 collection
Barrow believes that this inherent scepticism is caused by over-exposure to Internet, a lust for scientific explanations, and the way in which consumerism is driven by the satanic impulses of sex, excess, and a desire for immortality. Meanwhile, the devil has been reduced to a pitchfork-toting symbol of comedy, with health replacing it as a prevailing symbol of fear. The result is a carefully considered show that explores the parallels between religious and modern-day anxieties about wellbeing through bathroom paraphernalia, ghosts, and Henry Fuseli-esque demons.
‘We fear germs and uncleanliness the same way that we once feared the devil, and we like the ritual and feeling of being baptized’
For Barrow, the bathroom is a fascinating space. “There’s an everyday mortality to it,” she explains. “One of the most spiritual things we do is washing ourselves, going to the toilet, and brushing our teeth. We fear germs and uncleanliness the same way that we once feared the devil, and we like the ritual and feeling of being baptised.” An illustrated shower curtain and roll of loo paper echo this sentiment by highlighting the invisible presence of these dirty demons in the most sanitary of everyday items. There are also metallic surfaces that reflect the viewer’s image and the light from her ghostly neon lamp sculptures. “You catch them being reflected in the corner of your eyes kind of like you would see a spirit,” she says.
Claire Barrow AW ’16 collection and mixed media painting Do Ghosts Get Flu, 2016, Courtesy of M. Goldstein
Indeed, the afterlife is central to Barrow’s concept of cynical spiritualism. Here, spectres are the subject of canvas paintings that ponder the realities of being undead. “I’ve put them into the context of my surroundings, which is basically Hackney and my new-build flat,” she says. “I just can’t imagine them in this modern building.” One painting, ‘Midday Haunting’, depicts a burqa-clad spirit casually walking down the street in the middle of the day. “Nobody ever sees ghosts in the daytime,” she explains. “I wanted to examine the notion that you can even sell things to ghosts, that they have the same drives as we do. They want to be beautiful, desired, and seen, too.” Thus, the show also features tablets that ghosts can take to become visible and social once again – a side note parodying pharmacy medication. “It’s all about mortality. I was thinking that if I died and became a ghost, I’d be just like I am now.”
‘When I work with fabric, I use it as a blank canvas and that’s how I approached these pieces’
In order to create these objects, Barrow drew on her experience of working with garment fabric. For ‘Toilet Roll (untitled)’, she unravelled a loo roll (“the cheapest 2-ply kind that I could find”) and illustrated it with marker pens, before carefully rolling it back to together. “When I work with fabric, I use it as a blank canvas and that’s how I approached these pieces,” she explains. She also incorporated a fashion technique of photographing completed collections into her practice. “I took a series of snaps of me wearing the shower curtain, like a look book for the art,” she says. “I wanted myself to be the subject because it feels so indulgent. This whole process is about making work for yourself about your own feelings.”
Toilet Roll, 2016, Courtesy of M. Goldstein and Claire Barrow AW’16 collection
Was Barrow ever religious or spiritual? “I went to church until I was about 11, then someone at school started laughing at me for it,” she says. Later, she also giggles while describing how she was born in a hospital in Stockton-On-Tees that was on fire and christened in a barn surrounded by animals. On reflection, it seems like she’s chosen to tell these two anecdotes because of their associations with heaven and hell. Nevertheless, after a look round, it appears that social conditioning is in fact the crux of this of this show, not religion. In modern society, technology and health have replaced faith and morality, and narcissistic, resentful desires are celebrated, rather than lamented, through selfies and instant-gratification on Facebook and Snapchat. As such, ‘The Bed, The Bath & The Beyond’ can be seen as a fable about the cult of Mammon and the disturbing practice of self-worship in the digital era. It’s a bold statement, and all the more so considering the fact that before LFW, the 25-year-old was exclusively known as a fashion designer. Hopefully it will put her on the art world map. But has this change affected the way she regards herself? “Before,” she says, “I was asking myself, as a fashion designer, can I be an artist? I’m now asking myself, can I be an artist – and also a fashion designer?” Once again, the answer is yes.
This print feature is taken from Sleek issue #50, available for purchase on our online shop now.