House in the sky by InsideOutside

A musk cream color palette and a late 60s flair intertwine with entirely compostable materials, paradoxically appearing unpretentious and almost plebeian.  This collection is surprisingly practical and yet irrationally utopian. Martha succeeds in stepping beyond the common notion of wearability and present designs that achieve a utilitarian purpose, rather than simply an aesthetic appreciation.

Each piece of her collection is a literal objectification of itself, being pieces that can be worn, objects that can be used or spaces that can be inhabited, yet struggling to remain within the confinements of physical structure. Although seemingly practical, she adds a layer of thought to each stich. ‘House in the sky’ is a collection that has evolved around the ability to serve different purposes, consequentially obtaining a larger connotation within our lives.

There are no clear parameters to what defines Martha’s collection, I personally struggle to call it ‘fashion’.  Rather, her designs ruminate back to a movement of crucial importance within the development of art in the 90s, called relational aesthetics. To quote the founder Nicolas Bourriaud; ‘Relational Aesthetics is a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.’

Taking this concept further: ‘The role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever scale chosen by the artist.’

InsideOutside offers an opportunity to carefully select and reflect on the integration of clothes or objects within everyday realities. We observe, with haunting admiration, the obnoxious repetitiveness of commercial fashion powerhouses in delivering an ill-informed vision of what we want and perceive to need. In contrast, InsideOutside- as the name clearly states, is a reflection upon an interior state that evades any fear of solastalgia, but rather coins’ new parameters in which to find our personal heimat.