Craft Victoria
Melbourne, Australia
March 10 - April 21, 2011
Featuring Craig Woodward on fiddle
The Weeping Dress was a performance and installation arising from research of Victorian mourning rituals. During a woman's first year of mourning, nothing she wore could reflect the light. That meant wearing wool bombazine or crepe, which didn't hold the plant-based dyes so color ran from the fabric in the rain and heat, staining her body. I am fascinated by how this public performance of grief was experienced in such a private and corporeal way. I constructed a period mourning dress out of black crepe paper that I activated in performance to release the fugitive dye and leave a stain, or trace behind. The transformation of the dress and the stain it leaves behind suggests presence, absence and our own impermanence.
Above images and text from McDonald's blog. Link here.
