Simone Rocha curates all-women group present at Lismore Fortress in Eire

Conjuring up come-hither connotations of strip-joint signage and blokey songs by Elvis, Jay Z and Mötley Crüe, women women women shouldn’t be the obvious title for a severe exhibition of feminine artists. “I like the thought of it being tongue-in-cheek and barely provocative,” says clothier Simone Rocha of her selection of identify for the multigenerational, 19 artist present that she has simply curated for Lismore Fortress Arts, the modern artwork programme at Lismore Fortress, the Irish dwelling of the Dukes of Devonshire.

Dublin-born Rocha is the a number of award-winning creator of edgy womenswear that performs with conventional notions of femininity: suppose exaggerated ruching and ruffles, flowing ribbons and bows, dangling blood-ruby earrings and knee socks adorned with encrustations of pearls. Her puffy, flouncy, lacey and typically leathery attire are flamboyant, theatrical and exquisitely made and have gained her a excessive profile fanbase which incorporates Billie Eilish, Chloë Sevigny, Renée Zellweger and Rihanna. However on the identical time, Rocha’s togs critically mess with materials and stylistic conventions, and this spirit of darkly subversive mischief resonates in a lot of the work she’s chosen for the present.

In any case, there’s nothing demure nor obedient about Louise Bourgeois’s dangling double-phallic bronze Janus in Leather-based Jacket (1968); Dorothy Cross’s nipple-toed cowskin stilettos or style photographer Harley Weir’s untitled {photograph} made earlier this yr of an grownup girl dreamily suckling on the breast of one other. In Genieve Figgis’s current portray Upstairs Downstairs (2021), figures in maid and butler’s uniforms are lined up as if for a proper {photograph} however, in a state of affairs the place Downton Abbey merges with James Ensor, this orderly home association has been horribly distorted by approach wherein all their faces appear to have melted into grotesquely cadaverous masks. Figgis’s zombie workforce takes on a selected resonance throughout the context of Lismore Fortress, a spot of fairytale magnificence underpinned by centuries of behind-the-scenes home toil.

Maybe not surprisingly given the day job of the curator, the assorted methods wherein clothes can sign, form and in addition distort identification is a conspicuous theme. Lots of the works on present additionally chime with Rocha’s emotionally-charged use of typically incongruous supplies. Together with Cross’s bushy mammary footwear, Bourgeois’s shiny, sheathed double phallus and Figgis’s impasto uniforms, different suggestive clothes embody the voluminous and considerably Rocha-esque white attire worn by the little women in younger Irish artist Sian Costello’s lushly executed sequence of Wishful Self Portrait work; and the sprigged floral shirt that Iris Häussler has uncannily suspended in a block of translucent wax like an embalmed non secular relic. The harmless cuteness of the powder blue frocks and matching hats worn by the pair of ladies painted by Cassi Namoda solely renders all of the extra horrific the truth that they had been conjoined twins who had been offered as slaves for show in a circus.

No artist has scrutinised the position of garments and costume as a cultural signifier extra comprehensively than Cindy Sherman. A vital addition to the Lismore present are ten photographs from her iconic 1976 (Untitled) Bus Rider sequence of small black-and-white pictures depicting a number of characters—male, feminine, Black and white—of all ages and all portrayed by Sherman herself. This landmark physique of labor, which speaks volumes with probably the most primary props, poses, garments and make-up, was not solely a prelude to Sherman’s lifelong exploration of gender, self notion and the markers of sophistication and identification, nevertheless it has additionally shaped a key inspiration for quite a few subsequent artists who proceed to mine these themes, together with Yasumasa Morimura, Gillian Sporting and Rachel McLean.

Up to date artwork has all the time been central to Rocha’s observe and the artists she has both referenced in her collections, illustrated in publications or exhibited in her retailers lengthen from Pae White and Roni Horn to Robert Rauschenberg and John Constable. Louise Bourgeois has been an abiding affect, with Rocha incorporating her textile patterns into attire, in addition to creating a spread of Bourgeois-inspired earrings and even designing store show items based mostly on her Cell sculptures. The grande dame of visceral psychodramas and bodily provocations is right here represented by two sculptures, – the leather-jacketed Janus and an untitled bronze solid of 4 clasped palms every projecting a severed forearm–each of that are housed in their very own separate cell-like house in Lismore’s Spherical Tower.  

Rocha’s parade of ladies (women women) ranges from huge names to current graduates and all that lies in between; and far of the present’s energy lies within the conversations struck up between its very varied components. The small home that sprouts from one among Bourgeois’s severed arms not solely references the claustrophobic hybrid femme-maisons which have cropped up in her work from the Forties, however right here additionally reverberates within the 20-something British artist Sophie Barber’s large portray of a pair of pink homes that covers all the again wall of the principle gallery. Teetering precariously on spindly stilts and searching extra like an odd couple than two items of structure, his large dangling tarpaulin-canvas sends out blended messages about fireplace, dwelling and relationships in addition to offering a daring backdrop to the present.

Different fruitful exchanges embody the way in which wherein the intimate performative depth of a 1977 self portrait by the late Francesca Woodman corresponds with a close-by collaborative textile piece by younger Irish duo Eimear Lynch and Domino Whisker. Right here three sepia pictures of a ghostly dancing females are framed in suture-like pink stitchwork, which additionally nods to Louise Bourgeois’s expressively embroidered materials. Sian Costello solely graduated from Limmerick Faculty of Artwork and Design lower than two years in the past, however her small, lush, barely sinister infanta-girls greater than maintain their very own amidst the images of Roni Horn, Cindy Sherman and a wonderful resin lip-lamp by the late, nice Alina Szapocznikow.

Together with her chosen gang of artist-girls, Rocha presents a extremely private engagement with, and problem to notions of the feminine. In the course of the opening weekend there was additionally an extra, albeit unintentional, performative factor supplied by the designer and her three-woman crew, who, along with Lismore’s present chatelaine and fellow style maven Laura Cavendish, Countess of Burlington, reduce a dramatic sprint as they perambulated by means of the fortress’s halls and gardens, clad in an ever-changing array of Rocha finery. From beribboned heads to bejewelled and typically bovver-booted toes, this formidable posse resonated with each the present present in addition to a lot of Lismore’s previous grasp portraits of earlier wives, daughters and duchesses, offering dwelling respiration proof—if any had been wanted—of the perpetual energy of ladies, women women!

• women women women, Lismore Fortress Arts, till October 30 2022