Helen Kirkum

Written By Vickie Hayward

Helen Kirkum
Assemblages
Installation, 2024

Presentation curation for Helen Kirkum, ‘Assemblages’ took place during London Fashion Week A/W24. The collection was the designers last presentation for Newgen and provided an opportunity to share the wider story and network of people, influences and ideas that are part of her radical praxis in systems design.

The presentation we curated for Kirkum scales up the designers’s production process, and is assembled almost entirely from pre-existing materials and objects. Our initial conversations around influences and ideas was far reaching and the installation highlights and overlays many of these, from the Bauhaus’ reimagining of the material world to interplanetary regenerative farming practices to Islands of abandonment, where nature has reclaimed landscapes left behind.

For this presentation we wanted to include some additional artistic elements to further the immersive experience. Further referencing Kirkum’s process of deconstructing and reconstructing, we invited accomplished sound recordist and composer, Aino Tytti, to create a soundscape for the performance

Swanscombe Peninsula 1.52 by Aino Tytti

‘Swanscombe Peninsula 1.52’ is recorded in the Swanscombe Peninsula, Underwater microphones capture the sounds of breathing marshland. Long distance parabolic microphones and geophones extend the reach of Tilbury docks, registering the infrasonic booms of cargo being unloaded. Electromagnetic microphones pick up the radiating electrical activity from the tallest pylons in the UK, winding their way across the peninsula to the Thames and the Dartford Crossing.

Adding olfactory to the auditory, Iranian-British artist, Mehrnoosh Khadivi provided us with an additional work, a scent that filled the centre of the space with a distinct  veracious and musty perfume, the smell of the earth. The production of this scent is attributed to soil bacteria, which, when faced with unfavourable conditions grow spores that are dispersed into new, more favourable conditions, enabling the bacteria to survive.

Helen Kirkum is part of a small group who are truly the vanguard for sustainable fashion and design. Her process driven practice not only delivers thoughtful handcrafted product, but through transparency in making, she offers a precedent setting body of work and most crucially a road map that others can follow.  

 
Vickie Hayward
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