The Society of British Theatre Designers

A Sense of Occasion:

Kate Burnett’s new curatorial project will be on display in Waverley
1851 Gallery from the 25 January – Friday 5 February  2010, 10am – 5pm
Monday – Friday.

When do spaces become places and garments or clothes become costume?

The design and making processes of visualising narratives into
performance offer rich models of reflexive learning, but what of the
artefacts, costumes and environments created? Inhabited, they both
transcend their materiality and gain significance from it. Animated by
narrative they find resonance and particularity.

The Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) hold national
exhibitions that showcase contemporary design for performance. In
curating one and co-curating a further three of these quadrennial
exhibitions in both the UK and in Prague, Kate has had opportunities to
consider the afterlife of materials generated in an arts industry
context and ask what they can offer viewers and audiences who may never
have known the original production, material or contexts.

A Sense of Occasion will feature five garments, with an accompanying
narrative indicating the context and individual stories of the items.
The exhibits all belong to Kate’s mother, Lesley, and include two black
and yellow dresses by the renowned fashion house, Horrockses.

This small pilot exhibitions bring together her curatorial interest in
the re-presentation and re-reading of the ‘used’ artefacts, costumes and
environments of performance, with investigations into the narratives and
‘theatrical’ possibilities of objects, garments and places.

A Sense of Occasion
Kate Burnett
Waverley Building, Waverley St, Nottingham Trent University

25 January – Friday 5 February  2010, 10am – 5pm
Monday – Friday.

Admission Free