Fifteen years of JW Anderson are condensed here and now, redone and re-seen, mixed with Michael Clark imagery, memorabilia, even just the name and what it stands for. A cathartic reduction to the essence, reconnecting with the tropes and foundations. Reclaiming ownership: of the geometries, the paddings, the draping, the bluntness.
Michael Clark is an incipit. A starter, a white page, the agitator who defied the system, who threw a couple of glittery fingers in the face of the dominating culture and created another.
Looking back is not something I do very often, but occasionally it feels necessary as a way to move forward. The past can be a lens that brings the future into focus.
Michael Clark also resists looking back, despite having a body of work populated by images
that are seared into our collective consciousness. Sometimes I think all roads lead to Michael Clark - for me at least, but I imagine also for many in this room. Dance, music, art, fashion...
when I take stock of my own lodestars, they have all been part of his creative universe.
Michael Clark is not only a choreographer of bodies, but of British culture at large.
At its core this is a collection about fandom. Fandom is a funny thing: completely personal, frequently irrational, often embarrassing. As I looked back through my own archive for this show, resurrecting elements from each collection of the last fifteen years, Michael let me rifle through his.
It helped me pinpoint my own obsessions.
Jonathan Anderson
Michael Clark is the landmark who prompted others to do the same. As such, he is embedded deep, somewhere, in the foundation of JW Anderson and impels now the urgency of a blank slate.
An incipit, counter to the dominating culture.
