Dress Code presents five contemporary creative artists – Gerwyn Davies, Hannah Gartside, Lisa Hilli, Grace Lillian Lee and Emily McGuire – exploring fashion as the material embodiment of culture, gender and historical identity.

Dress Code merges art, design, craft and fashion to investigate the diversity of cultural approaches to making, wearing and buying across the Asia Pacific, and how performing these acts frames our communal and individual identities.

Dress Code features newly commissioned work by Hannah Gartside, Emily McGuire and Grace Lillian Lee. The new works extend each of the artists’ ongoing investigations of collaboration, consumerism and identity within the context of fashion through artwork, installation and photography.

The exhibition will also showcase signature works from Gerwyn Davies’ decade-long career, alongside an installation by Lisa Hilli.

Gerwyn will be Artist-in-Residence at the Museum from 29 October – 23 November 2018. During his residency he will create a series of costume and still-life photographic works in response to the Museum of Brisbane Collection. Visitors are encouraged to engage with Gerwyn, to debate and discuss the social and cultural dimensions of fashion and identity.

Dress Code is part of the Museum’s celebration of art / fashion / culture this summer, complementing our major exhibition The Designers’ Guide: Easton Pearson Archive by revealing how contemporary designers and artists are responding to topics of slow fashion, ethical collaboration and sustainability.