Enclothed Curating
AHRC Practice Based Fashion Research Network Project Northumbria University + Parsons School of Design, NY
Image: ‘Worn Out in Frome’ 2024 © Lucy Gundry
‘Enclothed curating’ is a strand of curatorial practice I am developing to combine the concept of enclothed cognition and knowledges to the curation of fashion, dress, clothing and costume in contemporary exhibition spaces.
Getting dressed
My practice-based research uses a sensory autoethnographic methodology (Pink, 2009), specifically haptic aesthetic (Paterson, 2007) to research the acquiring of invisible yet felt knowledges through embodied experiences.
I observed a series of ‘invisible touch lines’ (Gundry, 2020) created during the embodied act of pulling my cardigan on in front of the domestic mirror.
Image: ‘Invisible touchlines’, London 2015 © Lucy Gundry
Cut to pieces
‘Cut to pieces’ performed 13 February 2025.
Five participants took turns to cut the outer layers of clothes from my skin, whilst I sat cross legged on a gallery floor.
Although outwardly passive, I observed embodied haptic aesthetic experiences as invisible touchlines were cut around me through the acts of lifting, pulling and cutting my clothes.
The cut pieces fell to the floor as they were released.
Inspired by Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ performance in 1964.
Image: ‘Cut to pieces’, Black Swan Arts, Frome 2025 © Lucy Gundry
dr lucy gundry 