Baroque and Roll at Little VERSAILLES with Atelier Rococo.
Atelier Rococo are a creative collaborative entity sometimes referred to as Magdalene Celeste and Drucilla Burrell. Together we have more than 20 years in the fields of fashion, costume design, styling, creative direction, art and photography. Our work focuses on the whimsical Queering of historical narratives. During lockdown we created a commission of 15 works for the National Gallery X, London.
Drucilla has a background in classical oil painting which she put on hold due to monetary restrictions. Wanting to still remain near the classical learning traditions and hoping to learn by osmosis she ended up working as an administrator at a Classical painting atelier. As a lot of people who go into arts admin in order to fund their practice find out, she then had little time to do her actual practice. As a result, she took her interest and passion for classical portraiture into photography and specifically iphone photography as the medium that best suited her time and budgetary restraints. It also allowed her a sense of spontaneity and a ability to work and adapt to situations with speed.
Magdalene began her fashion career in Borth as early as 7 when she started sewing and making her own clothes. Inspired by historical construction she became particularly interested in 18th C court dress and 1930s glamour. Not attending formal education meant she was able to dedicate her time to exploring these passions while dressing as she wished. Heavily inspired by the blurring of gender lines and heavy dose of the glamour that 1930s Hollywood movies alluded to, she mixed an interest in construction and undergarments of 18th C court-dress to being to forge her own unique style. After stealing a book on period clothing from the local library in 1992 (sorry Aberystwyth Library!) and seeing Vogue by Madonna dressed as Marie Antoinette on MTV she focused on making historically inspired clothes from anything she could find. Thirty years later she continues to blend elements of historical costume and portraiture, fetish-wear, haute couture and fine art to create visual narratives through clothing.
Finding a strong collaborator was always a wish for both of us. Luckily, we found each other, with complimentary styles and similar interests. There is a cross-over of influences and interests where we meet and converge making for interesting conversations and developments. Common visual languages mean there is unsaid ease while working together, often corrections made simultaneously. Both have a spontaneous and slightly chaotic way of working that relies heavily on the hard-earnt visual encyclopedia or queer, glamour, fashion and historical codifiers. Working sessions tend to be very short and sharp with the work being constructed and executed at speed due to the easy nature of the collaboration and the clear vision of both.
Both of us have an interest in the ‘gatekeeping’ that surrounds portraiture, having a portrait painted or even painting a portrait is an expression of power and status that can prove largely inaccessible for many. Being asked to explore the National Gallery collection allowed for an exploration of those themes, bringing in alternative narratives and asking questions of the works.
Generating a substantial body of work throughout the various lockdowns presented interesting limitations and developments. The initial aim being to hire sets, formal shoot spaces and other models to create the work, we quickly shifted our focus to creating the works at home. Both being interested in the construction of artistic vistas this concept became the ideal format to explore the National Gallery works from the living room.
Limited to shooting ourselves and those in our bubble, creating the sets presented a wonderful opportunity to escape the feeling of lockdown restriction. Both Magdalene and Drucilla use dress as a form of expression so bringing the set construction into the everyday meant the process became part of our daily lockdown experience. Both working full time we snuck shoots in at lunchtimes, early mornings and evenings. Limited to the props available and those we could source quickly from the internet fostered immediate creative responses to previously highly planned shoot concepts. Table clothes were pinned into whimples, pot plants became giant trees etc.
Sourcing fabrics proved problematic during lockdown so there was a lovely return to early work. Magdalene repurposed items such as curtains, bedspreads, tablecloths, old clothes and fabric remnants to re-create the intricate works in the paintings.
As Drucilla largely works with natural light and no photoshop the lack of daylight during the winter months presented a unique challenge, scrambling to finish the set ups became a regular occurrence and we believe this generated more ‘life’ and immediacy to the works adding to a sense of playful whimsy.
Early attempts presented both hits and misses, some of the works have been re-shot as the process became more organic and lessons were learnt about timings and the best place to shoot certain moods.
As Drucilla largely works with natural light and no photoshop the lack of daylight during the winter months presented a unique challenge, scrambling to finish the set ups became a regular occurrence and we believe this generated more ‘life’ and immediacy to the works adding to a sense of playful whimsy.
Early attempts presented both hits and misses, some of the works have been re-shot as the process became more organic and lessons were learnt about timings and the best place to shoot certain moods.
The National Gallery works themselves also provided an escape from reality (something both Drucilla and Magdalene enjoy about the National Gallery itself as physical space). Investigating the decadent signifiers of traditional that exist in classical paintings while using contemporary media in a domestic setting, added additional appreciation for the works we knew well, and enabled them to get to know works we had not previously studied. The re-claiming of these works felt bolstering during a period of turmoil and cultural shift. Being ‘allowed’ to ask those questions visually also fostered a feeling of inclusion, in a space we had previously felt we ‘squatted’ in.
The queering of gender and traditional gender sterotypes served as a way of exposing and questioning the displays of power and hierarchy embedded within the collection images. The initial plan had been to work with a variety of different models allowing them to feedback into the process and for those traditionally excluded from these spaces ‘re-claim’ the imagery for themselves through subversion. This forms the next stage in the work and will be something we will be moving forward with when lockdowns lift.
Drucilla’s photography uses themes of playfulness and whimsy. These concepts became a structural way of working during lockdown, it was a difficult time and it became very fundamental that the shoots were enjoyable. Where as previously shoots may have been pre-planned, structured and pressured, we aimed to remove the pressure and enjoy the process. During one shoot we were waiting for the perfect light and were disturbed by a knock at the door which meant we lost the shot!
She believes this heavily added to the works, which hopefully provide a strong feeling of escapism. Whimsy allows for the exploration of unconscious narratives. She feels that images which are playful, but slightly surreal, provide the opportunity for us to question the part of our brain that says ‘ I know what that is’ and would normally dismiss any further input.
Within this context ‘I know what this is, it’s a photograph of Venus’ this is a ridiculously surreal conclusion – because of course it can’t be a photograph of Venus. We tend to be more comfortable with a surreal question than the reality of the image – a woman in a contemporary setting that references historical settings sitting surrounded by fabric in what appears to be a domestic bedroom.
Historical court dress was historically almost completely inaccessible to the majority of the population, and continued to remain largely inaccessible to us. Due to time, budget and lockdown restrictions Magdalene worked with available materials, using couture techinques and tailoring mixed with draping and pinning. The central illusion was created with structured garments that sometimes took hours, mixed with quickly draped and pinned bed linens and curtains and anything we could find. This ‘Rococo Punk’ process of construction has a history within the Club Kid and Ballroom scenes and is a technique ultisied by certain Fashion Designers including Vivinne Westwood. We purchased a wedding dress from a charity shop which then formed the base garment for multiple costumes, it was worn backwards, elements were added and removed for example.
We choose to invest on working with small scale designers during the project. We purchased wigs from Cayden Fox, who creates wigs for many drag artists including those on Ru Paul’s drag race. He perfectly matched our brief creating fashion takes on historical hairstyles. We hired a Gainborough inspired theatre set to create the backdrop for the Gainsborough referenced works. We were intending to set these flats up in a community small theatre that was closed during lockdown but further restrictions were brought in so these ended up in our living room. We were forced to reconsider using the set in its complete form and used the flats to create vistas which clearly showed showed the domestic setting we were placed in.
Being asked to reference 15 works from the gallery we choose a selection from those that we knew well and which had already provided inspiration, and those which we had either ignored or not yet explored. We aimed to select works which gave the opportunity of escape, those which referenced both wealth and domesticity and classical portraits. We also selected some purely based on outfits we wanted to recreate being contemporary dandies!