2013
RUTH HOGBEN
Closely collaborating with Nick Knight for several years, Ruth Hogben developed a similar approach to the film as an important medium for showcasing and promoting fashion. Still, she shaped her own visual vocabulary and stylistic mark, based on complex post-production procedures. She created a series of extremely refined and visually involving short films presenting the work of one of the most innovative and original names of British fashion: Gareth Pugh.
Aesthetic references in Pugh’s work span from the avant-garde theatre costumes of Oskar Schlemmer to the cult figures of the vaudeville and club scenes of the ‘80s, such as Klaus Nomi, revisited in a more punk and post-industrial key. Graphically effective and formally striking, his models function as wearable sculptures that reshape and distort the features of the human figure. Some of the most daring models, such as those made of inflatable materials, are also performative, as they change form and shape, enveloping and transforming the body and the very notion of the garment.
The strong performative aspect of Gareth Pugh’s clothes is amplified through Ruth Hogben’s films, which, like the clothes, play with strong graphical contrasts, mixed with booming sound and pulsing rhythms of body movements, morphing into fascinating kaleidoscopic phantasmagorias. Together, Pugh’s and Hogben’s work fuse different expressive languages, creating an effect of fluid flow between formal and conceptual references that link theatre to film, computer graphics to animation, art to fashion.
Ruth Hogben assisted Nick Knight on numerous films for SHOWstudio, as well as creating films with creatives such as Gareth Pugh, Rick Owens, Katie Grand, and KT Shillingford, and for brands including Louis Vuitton, Barneys, MAC Cosmetics, and Selfridges. Her work was recently screened at the ICA, part of the 2009 Birds Eye View Film Festival, ASVOFF 2009, and the Fash/On Film Festival London 2012.
2013
RUTH HOGBEN
Closely collaborating with Nick Knight for several years, Ruth Hogben developed a similar approach to the film as an important medium for showcasing and promoting fashion. Still, she shaped her own visual vocabulary and stylistic mark, based on complex post-production procedures. She created a series of extremely refined and visually involving short films presenting the work of one of the most innovative and original names of British fashion: Gareth Pugh.
Aesthetic references in Pugh’s work span from the avant-garde theatre costumes of Oskar Schlemmer to the cult figures of the vaudeville and club scenes of the ‘80s, such as Klaus Nomi, revisited in a more punk and post-industrial key. Graphically effective and formally striking, his models function as wearable sculptures that reshape and distort the features of the human figure. Some of the most daring models, such as those made of inflatable materials, are also performative, as they change form and shape, enveloping and transforming the body and the very notion of the garment.
The strong performative aspect of Gareth Pugh’s clothes is amplified through Ruth Hogben’s films, which, like the clothes, play with strong graphical contrasts, mixed with booming sound and pulsing rhythms of body movements, morphing into fascinating kaleidoscopic phantasmagorias. Together, Pugh’s and Hogben’s work fuse different expressive languages, creating an effect of fluid flow between formal and conceptual references that link theatre to film, computer graphics to animation, art to fashion.
Ruth Hogben assisted Nick Knight on numerous films for SHOWstudio, as well as creating films with creatives such as Gareth Pugh, Rick Owens, Katie Grand, and KT Shillingford, and for brands including Louis Vuitton, Barneys, MAC Cosmetics, and Selfridges. Her work was recently screened at the ICA, part of the 2009 Birds Eye View Film Festival, ASVOFF 2009, and the Fash/On Film Festival London 2012.
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