EXHIBITIONS

Hackers: Costumes From the Motion Picture

November 19th 2020 - 30th January 2021, Mon - Sat 12-6pm - The Horse Hospital, London UK

Back in the future of 1995, the teen techno-thriller Hackers burst onto cinema screens with its cyber phreak aesthetics, video game visuals and mind-bending techno soundtrack. For many, it was the vibrancy of the cartoon-like, surreal costumes that gave the film its unique identity, cult status and era-defining quality that still resonates today. 

Styled by costume designer Roger K. Burton, the film is credited with giving hacker culture its cool credentials and reinterpreting cyberpunk by taking in influences from countless mid 90s style tribes: street punk, techno, surf, skateboard, grunge, drag, rave, fetish and exotic club culture scenes. A plethora of fashion labels make an appearance - Adidas, Animal, Black Flys, Casio, Christopher Nemeth, Dope, Dr Martens, Fuct, La Rocka, Michiko Koshino, Nike, Oakley, Quicksilver and Vivienne Westwood - crashing into a glorious fusion of high-techno style. 

The wardrobe was worn with attitude by a young virtually unknown cast including Angelina Jolie in her first major role and her future ex-husband Jonny Lee Miller. The casts’ eclectic outfits have been variously described as “medieval-mixed-with-athletic-wear”, “part Saved By the Bell, part Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner, part Sex Queen from a hair metal video”. Burton’s cinematic references for the wardrobe however, were cult movies like The Warriors (1979), Escape From New York (1981), Liquid Sky (1982), and Paris is Burning (1990). The film is brimming with subtle nods to a host of other subcultural artefacts such as counter-culture magazines the Details, Paper, Juxtapoz, Thrasher, Wired and Ray Gun, the band Deee-Lite and the Wigstock drag festival, among many others.

For the first time since the movie’s release twenty-five years ago, sci-fi fans and fashion geeks can get close and personal to a display of the main cast’s costumes, accessories and Rollerblades. Also included in the exhibition are the original mood boards for each character, key on-set costume books containing all the character Polaroids in their outfits - scene by scene, and rarest of all, photos from the fittings, including in some of the outfits that didn’t make the final cut.

“As we were filming on the streets of New York and London I don’t think that any of us imagined for one minute that Hackers would become such a much-loved cult movie. Amazingly, I still regularly receive emails from fans fascinated with the costumes 25 years after it was released.” - Roger K Burton, Costume Designer.

The exhibition will be on display from 19th Nov 2020 at London’s longest running underground gallery the Horse Hospital, the place where the costumes were originally conceived and have been stored since.

VIVE LE PUNK: REDRESSED

November 30th – December 21st 2019, Wed - Sat 12-6pm - The Horse Hospital, London UK

We are proud to present a retrospective exhibition of rare original couture clothes designed by Vivienne Westwood & Malcom McLaren for their revolutionary shops at 430 Kings Road, ‘Let it Rock’, ‘Too Fast to Live, too Young to Die’, ‘Sex’ and ‘Seditionaries’.

In 1993, Vive Le Punk redefined the way clothing was being exhibited in museums and galleries by removing prohibitive barriers and making their confrontational garments physically accessible to visitors.

Vive Le Punk: Redressed punctuates the continuing legacy of Westwood and McLaren’s subversive designs and the pressing urgency for new forms of radical disruption in the age of pervasive surveillance, cognitive capitalism and the increasing commodification of reality.  

MODS: SHAPING A GENERATION

April 13th – June 30th 2019 - New Walk Museum, Leicester UK

A major exhibition at Leicester’s New Walk Museum and Art Gallery (April 12th -June 30th) will include ephemera, costumes and art from the Mod scene. The exhibition is curated and designed by social history author Shaun Knapp based around his latest book, Mods: Two City Connection, and Joe Nixon, co-founder of Arch Creative. It includes eyewitness accounts and photographs from Leicester and Nottingham Mods, which have never been seen or heard before.

The costumes – as well as original 1960s clothing – will be provided by designer Roger K Burton. One of the most established and well-known costume designers in the UK, Roger K Burton has worked in music videos, television, films and commercials since the late 1970s: he has dressed hundreds of influential artists and bands, from David Bowie to The Rolling Stones. With over 50 years’ experience of collecting vintage street fashion, Roger, an author and former Leicester Mod, started out supplying original clothing to cult films such as Quadrophenia and Absolute Beginners, and now hires original street fashion to TV and film.

requiem: material/memory

May 3rd - 25th, 2019 - The Horse Hospital, London UK

Torn. Moth-eaten. Tarnished. Degraded. Discarded. From the infinite potential of a pair of unworn shoes to a tweed jacket crumbling from years of use, our clothing resonates with memories of our lives.

Among the billions of human experiences of the world, it is the common ritual of dressing that captures our individuality. Not just by what we choose to wear, but through the intimate contact of skin to garment, leaving behind the detritus of our bodies on our clothes. These stains, holes and frays are evidence of our existence imbedded in fabric which will likely outlive the wearer.

 When we are separated from our clothing, what happens to these abandoned documents of human experience? What could be known about our lives from what hangs in our closets? Sifting through the coffee stains and mended knees of worn clothing, we become archaeologists of memory, with our garments the monument to untold histories.

Displaying garments from The Contemporary Wardrobe Collection spanning the last two centuries, Requiem: Material/Memory explores the intimacies and contradictions of memory as embedded in fabric. From the Berserkers of Viking lore to modern fashion criticism, this exhibition considers the truth and tangibility of recollection, nostalgia, and what remains of “us” once we are gone. 

Presented by curator and archivist Cyana Madsen with support from The Horse Hospital, Requiem: Material/Memory features works by artist and material culture researcher Ellen Sampson (http://www.ellensampson.com) and sound designer and composer Jonah Falco.