Musée Galliera - Paris

ProjeCt Title: Lunar dresses and sidereal sculptures
ThEme: The long night of museums
YEAR: 2008

Diana Brennan has always questioned how her creations, whether they be tapestry or knitting, dialogue with their environment. The "Lunar dresses" float like shooting stars, suspended from the museum's ceilings. According to the lighting, they seem to materialise out from, or dissolve into their surroundings. 
 
The dream like extensions of discarded clothing, the pastel toned shrunken jumpers that Diana has deliberately felted to halt their growth, act as garments that have condensed within their textures the concentration of a life, and reminiscent of a childhood that still inhabits us.

The dresses are imbued with the souvenir of a friendship, and amongst the anonymous titles of some of the dresses « Sue’s white peonies »,  « Laurence’s Miss Sixties dress » and  « Sweet pea dress » stand out. 

Diana admits likewise to her fascination for the copper used in the electronic technologies. Materials are her vocabulary for light and space, as can be seen in “Smoke patterns of Etienne-Jules Marey”.

Like an environmental tightrope walker, Diana has secured vessels of knitted skirts to the reliquary jumpers. They reveal skilful constructions   consisting of tensions, of tightness and slackening, of undulations and stretching. With the same mastery, she inserts myriads of transparent glass beads that appear as dewdrops or rain iridising the surface of the whole cloth.

Special thanks

• Silvia Franceschini
• IEC
• D6 Bell Light
• Lise Brisson

Texts by Lise Brisson
In charge of events
Galliera Museum
Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris
10, Avenue Pierre-1er-de-Serbie, 75116 Paris

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