Dress of a Thousand Oceans

Dress of a Thousand Oceans is an installation enveloping the viewer in the sensory intensity of a crowded second-hand clothes marketplace where everything competes for attention, yet treasures rest beneath the clutter. Unapologetically true to herself and her roots, Gvantsa Jishkariani creates brutally honest work. Her world is on display: intense, physical, bursting with stuff and clutter as things of beauty are peppered all the way through.

The seemingly endless rows of used clothes and how they are assembled mimic the stalls around the city in underground pathways, markets, and second-hand clothing stores. The artist wants you to take a dip in her daily life's reality, experience the city as she does, and feel the overwhelming, at times, oppressive accumulation of consumeristic goods all around that are meant to compliment one’s individuality, but with their volume might be doing just the opposite.

While the continuous patchwork of things we are surrounded by fades into the periphery for many, Gvantsa sees these places as treasure chests concealing gems ripe for discovery. She dives into her emotions and allows them to guide her creative process, moving between mediums with great curiosity and ease, selecting materials best suited to conveying her message.

The socio-economic reality lived by the artist is central to the exhibition. Gvantsa shows her pieces in the environment they are born out of rather than a manicured surrounding. The mosaic flower is held together by second-hand denim, used to its limits, and ready to be discarded. Soft sculpture frames sown out of dead-stock material symbolise resistance and endurance in the face of insecurity. The figurative felt pieces are charged with fantastical power, depicting material morphing into the natural habitat, simultaneously conveying the genesis and the ultimate resting place of the items surrounding the works. They are created from finite resources for momentary utility only to be discarded onto landfills overflowing into our water and forests and therefore sewing the new landscapes, new reality, new dress of a thousand oceans.