Where art meets fashion and politics

I started working with clothes and other materials at the end of their life cycle, says Montague. “Taking them apart to see how theyd been put together originally, and then sewing them together again. I was drawn to the slowness of stitching. Traditionally, its been womens work, and a domestic activity. I marveled a lot about who had made these original materials.

For the past three years, Montague has worked at Temple Bar Studios in Dublin, on a residency that will conclude with a solo exhibition of animation and sculpture called Worm Stitch In December. Previously, she had done research in the National Folklore Archives, and her interest in indigenous Irish culture fed into the creation of her blankets.

Every material has its own identity, she says. Most of the blankets Ive used are lambs wool, and recognizably Irish. Ive also used GAA tops and Primark t-shirts. The works are textile collages, if you like. If Id hung them on the wall, they could be taken for tapestries. But I didnt intend them to be seen as some kind of rarefied art objects, so Ive laid them on the floor instead.

Montague was invited to contribute to Fashion Show on the basis of work shed already produced. I made these blankets during the Covid lockdown, so its interesting now to see them in a group exhibition. The work often acquires a new resonance in that context. I suppose the most striking thing about Fashion Show is that its so political.

The politics explored by the Viennese artist Anna-Sophie Berger in The Wearer of Clothes, a sculpture that is part ballgown and part tent, are inarguably sexual. The idea is that the work is both active and passive, says Berger. Its inviting someone into your skirts for protection, but this is also the space where the genitals are, so its also where sexuality could happen. The title I gave the work The Wearer of Clothes – is entirely poetic; I didnt want to feminise it because were dealing with a dress, an object that is already, at least historically, seen as feminine, though thats changing now, thank God.

Bergers background is in fashion design. When I started studying, I had no preconceptions about the divisions between fashion and art, she says. I was raised in a household where the emphasis was on a humanist education, so my learning about art was from a classical bourgeois notion of beautiful things and creativity. Of course I understood that being a fashion designer was not the same as being a painter, but when I signed up for university, I chose fashion because it seemed the most exciting option.

Berger devoted six years to her fashion studies, but always with the expectation that she would become an artist rather than a clothes designer. I wasn’t going to Paris to work in the industry. I knew I was too hedonistic to just make a product to give to others as an expression of their own character. So I transitioned to fine art because I understood it was what I wanted to do.

Fashion is often viewed as a more blatantly commercial form of creativity than the visual arts, but Berger is not sure there is such a clear division. Theres this idea that fashion is more open about its relationship to money and commerce, that its the more honest whore, so to speak. But I dont know if theres that real a conflict, or if, at the end of the day, theres actually a whole lot of difference.

• Fashion Show runs at the Glucksman Gallery, UCC until Sunday, November 6. Further information: glucksman.org