Penthouse Mouse
The Sunday Age
Sunday February 17, 2008
46 Stanley St, Collingwood. Until March 9. Daily 11am-9pm. penthousemouse.com.
Like Warhol and Sedgwick, launches and bar tabs, Ricky Swallow and the colour black, art and fashion belong together. In this way, Penthouse Mouse is the perfect adjunct to the 2008 L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. It's a "pop-up" warehouse, presented by Melbourne studio MOTH Design, to exhibit and sell collections by local independent designers (read: those not billed for L'Oreal Paris runway). It's also an exhibition space. With input from Tai Snaith (of Rollergrooves fame), alongside Pat O'Brien of BUS Gallery, and design collectives 10 Extra Spaces and Studio Organic, this series of installations will alternately ignore and comment on the surrounding sartorial hysteria. Look out for Mel Upton's careful replicas of, well, rubbish (made to blend with the urban-grime-warehouse-chic), and Sally Blenheim's oversized Samara-exits-the-television type sculptures in rubber, Perspex and wood (bringing to mind one of the most influential Japanese hairstyles of the '90s).
© 2008 The Sunday Age
