Space is the place: the Daniel Lismore show

I don't normally blog about fashion exhibitions (no, man) but I'm making an exception for the Daniel Lismore Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Taken show at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry for the very good reason that ... er, I feel like it. Well, for that reason, and also because even a non-fashionista like me could see - and kind of enjoy - some of the music-related elements in the exhibition. Lismore's thing in this show is towering mannequins done up in multiple layers of bejewelled fabric adorned with outlandish accessories, many referencing punk - or, more especially, the post-punk/New Romantic scenes of Boy George and the BOY London clothes line. For example:

And this: 

And look away now royalists, also this: 

The royal couple of yesteryear: Jamie Reid eat your heart out

Yes, kinda nice. Seen in the flesh they're slightly unsettling. Each is about 2.5 metres high. There are quite a lot of them (maybe 40 in all) stationed in a couple of decent-sized rooms with lurid, semi-flurescent salmon-coloured walls and flooring (visitors have to wear plastic shoe covers to avoid scuffing the floor: your contrary blogger of course didn't like being told to do this, but graciously agreed when he saw the glittering figures over the gallery attendant's shoulder). Anyway Lismore, we're told, took inspiration for his hulking figures from the Chinese Terracotta Army. And staying with things martial, an exhibition info board also reckons Lismore became the first person to wear armour in Parliament following a ban imposed in the seventeenth century under Oliver Cromwell. (Hmm, it's a nice anecdote, but er, did this Cromwellian ban actually happen? I studied Cromwell at university and don't remember this ...). Anyway, I can sort of perceive the armourial in these dazzling figures, though I also thought of Sun Ra with his mash-up of Egyptian sun god symbols and costuming reminscent of a 1950s b-movie about an alien invasion.

 

'Portrait of Sun Ra' (1974): Jim Newman.

Lismore goes big on the accessories. Giant safety pins, chunky metal necklaces, strings of pearls, pin badges, ostrich feathers, prints of Boy George and Charles & Di (which is the more camp?), and all sorts of bric-à-brac and oddments. One of his pieces announces itself thus:

"Empress 2016: Sorapol ostrich feather skirts, broken tiaras, neoprene jacket, Alexander McQueen jacket, Levi Palmer skirt, ostrich feather handbag, Katharine Hamnett jacket once worn by Boy George, Sorapol skirt once worn by Paloma Faith."

Once worn, eh? Touched by the hand of fame ... Is Lismore's obsessive listing of these elements - complete with their famous former owners - part homage, part study in ironic distancing? Once worn by, or worn once? To me this reads as a sort of deconstruction of the apparel of fame, even if it's likely to also be a tribute to pioneers like Boy George. The Coventry City of Culture promo bumpf for the exhibition says the mannequins (or "sculptural ensembles") are created from Lismore's "personal collection of over 7,000 curiosities and displayed alongside his personal archive of photography, film and found objects". Hmm. Why wouldn't they be his "personal" collection and his "personal" archive - who else's would they be? Here's where CCoC once again goes slightly awry if you ask me. The hint of breathless reverence for an artist from (gasp) Coventry is typical of how this cultural jamboree has manged to stifle even good stuff like the Lismore show. It was the same with the 2-Tone exhibition last year which was too much of a Dammers love-in for its own good. Of the two, I prefer the Lismore show - the otherworldly figures seem to almost break free of the slightly sterile environment of the Herbert. Stare at these things for long enough and you can almost feel yourself being transported to the planet Venus on Sun Ra's spaceship ...  Yes, space is the place, and here the space is just strange enough (thanks, hot salmon-pink paint) to take us somewhere interesting. A fair bit is made in the exhibition of Lismore's politics - his LGBTIQ+ rights activism, his interest in wider human rights and environmental rights and so on. I was a tiny bit dubious about this. A few slogans on the wall or the incorporation of pride colours or Tom of Finland-style butch gay iconography is all well and good, but it seemed a bit ... pat. To me it felt more of a stylisation of politics rather than politics itself. Which I guess could be part of the point. But still, it seemed quite post-post-Derek Jarman. Instead, the real politics of the show was perhaps the deeper strangeness of the figures - the feel of the space, and also the slight eeriness of the tinkling music done by Einar Örn Benediktsson (music which I actually think I noticed only once, but to good effect). If anything - and at the risk of being predictable - I would venture to say there could perhaps have been somewhat more music at Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Taken. One of Lismore's figures had a painted ghettoblaster at its feet. Was there a mixtape inside and what was on it? This blogger demands to know ...