Tribes – New Hat

A portrait based on a drawing from life of Count Adrianno Fettucini . In real life, Count Adriano describes himself as a Male Circus Burlesque, Gentleman Juggler and Comedy Musician and wears a three piece suit and a bowler hat as part of his act. Here, however, I have played with reality – constructed or otherwise, and explored how signifiers of clothing can trick the viewer into making assumptions about personality and taste.

Varnished acrylic on card with white mount in a painted white box frame. Part of the series, ‘Tribes’.

Tribes
We are expected to decode the non-verbal symbols given out by the people around us. As children, we are taught to judge others by the way they look (evil and good characters in stories are almost always signalled visually for example). As adults we align ourselves to social tribes by the way we dress to symbolise our similarity or difference. Social tribes could constitute generation groups, or economic groups, or cultural groups and I am interested in how we use specific non-verbal language of taste (be that in clothes, music, labels etc) to communicate with others.