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Exhibition news: Print Matters — KCCUK’s contribution to London Fashion Week

As in previous years, the KCCUK is hosting an exhibition that coincides with London Fashion Week and the International Fashion Showcase:

Print Matters

15 February 2016 – 24 March 2016
Korean Cultural Centre UK, Grand Buildings, 1-3 Strand, London, WC2N 5BW
Free Admission
Private View: 15 February, 18:30-20:30pm
‘Brand Korea’ – Panel Discussion. 22nd February 19:00pm

Print-matters-graphic

Magazines promote utopian spaces encompassing including aspirational narratives and depicting dreamlike places. They offer us an escape from everyday life. Print Matters explores the different ways in which Korean designers have used magazines as a source of inspiration, reflection and exposure.

Print-matters-imageRecently there has been a noticeable decline in digital tablets sales, whilst an interest in print has increased – most notably, and perhaps less predictably, amongst the young. What is clear from these findings is that print offers a different experience, and therefore, we can understand the roots of this revival in the unique ways in which we appreciate, and relate to, the physical.

The exhibition will be split into three sections, each space reflecting a different point in a designers’ career: the studio, the graduation collection and the magazine feature.

The Studio: Garments made by designers Yeeun Park, Dahye Jee and Gyuwon Jeong will be displayed against a mood-board backdrop, comprising the respective designers’ works on paper. This studio-style space reveals how crucial the individual designers’ editing of magazine content can be to the research behind their designs.

The exhibition will then look at The Graduate Collections of URBANLOGO 88, Han Kim and Ahyoung Choi. The designers will reflect on how their relationships with magazines are helping them shape their future in fashion. The collections will be displayed next to the designers’ conceptual vision behind their graduate collections. The display reveals the importance of fantasy to the creation of both the editorial image and the physical creation of a collection.

Fashion magazines are an integral part of the marketing of fashion designers and brands. The final section of the exhibition will look at how successful designers’ careers often result in their own Magazine Feature. What was once a source for research and admiration for the designers such as KYE, LIE, D-Antidote and R.Shemiste becomes a fresh resource for fashion lovers, followers and students.

Visitors will also be asked to consider how they value magazines. A Korean-style newsstand will be erected within the exhibition, allowing the visitor to interact with magazines within a gallery environment.

Fashion subsists in printed and physical form. The physical life of a garment is compulsory to its existence, whilst print allows garments’ lives to transcend their original time, territory and vision – It feeds the physical with added relevance, value and variable contextualisation. During International Fashion Showcase, Somerset House will house a giant magazine installation, which will feature a graphic interpretation of the Print Matters exhibition at KCC. The exhibition will be transformed into its own editorial feature. To coincide with the Print Matters exhibition will be the launch of a magazine of the same name, allowing the exhibition to exist, and therefore live on, in print.

Fashion designers have a complex relationship with the fashion magazine. Print Matters is a fashion exhibition that explores Korean designers’ relationship with magazines. The exhibition will examine the various ways designers and visitors cherish, collect and connect with printed material – something that is especially relevant in the current digital age.

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