Designer Alice Potts reflects on her project Dance Biodegradable Personal Protective Equipment (DBPPE) post COVID facemasks, currently on display in NGV Triennial 2020, in conversation with NGV Senior Curator Katie Somerville and guests Sophie Begg and Karen Webster.
Dance Biodegradable emerged from Potts’s personal experiences as a designer during London’s first weeks of the pandemic, encouraging her to pause her design practice and begin producing reusable and sustainable cotton masks created out of food waste and dyed using flowers. These masks act as critical design objects from an alternate sustainable future in balance with nature.
Presented in partnership with MIMCO as part of Melbourne Fashion Festival.
This talk will be delivered online.
Information for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing
Moderator
Katie Somerville is Senior Curator, Fashion and Textiles, at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). She has worked with a range of fashion and textiles collections for close to three decades, including at the National Gallery of Australia and Historic Houses Trust of NSW. During her time at the NGV she has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions including The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture (2017), Making the Australian Quilt: 1800–1950 (2016), Express Yourself: Romance Was Born for Kids (2014–15), Martin Grant, Paris (2005–06) and Akira Isogawa: Printemps-Été (2004–05).
Speakers
Alice Potts is a designer and bio-fabricator, who graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in London and independently develops a combination of sustainable and biology based materials. She is best recognised for her ‘Sweat Crystallisation’ works that turned human sweat into a biocrystal for use in art and design projects. In 2018, Alice received a Fellowship with the Onassis Foundation in Athens and was named one of London’s most influential people in the category of Business: Fashion and Beauty at the 2019 Progress 1000 Gala.
Sophie Begg is the Senior Jewellery Designer at MIMCO. She has a background in 3D Object and Jewellery Design and studied at Central Saint Martins, College of The Arts London and then completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Sydney’s College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales. Sophie has a strong interest in fashion-inspired fine jewellery and costume jewellery with a love for Industrial object design.
Karen Webster is the Principal and Dean of LCI Melbourne, a higher education institute specialising in art and design. Karen is well-known in the creative industries, with more than four decades of experience in roles including Festival Director of Melbourne Fashion Festival, Design Director at Buzz and senior leadership roles at RMIT University and The Whitehouse Institute of Design.
