A conversation between Irish fashion designer and A#18 curator Simone Rocha with A Magazine Curated By Editor-in-Chief Dan Thawley, on the occasion of her first curated exhibition Girls Girls Girls at Lismore Castle Arts, from April 2nd to Oct 30, 2022.
As Cecilia Alemani’s 2022 Biennale The Milk Of Dreams attempts to recalibrate the art world’s historical gender divide in Venice this year, another time-travelling exhibition in Lismore, Ireland sees a multitude of feminine and feminist world views on show. Cherry-picking icons from the canon of radical 20th century female sculptors and photographers mixed with an array of emerging names, Simone Rocha has curated her first exhibition under the banner title Girls Girls Girls – an intergenerational warcry that corresponds well to the fashion designer’s own subversive vision of contemporary womanhood, one she has cultivated in over a decade of darkly romantic fashion collections that have explored adolescence, motherhood and female friendship intertwined with her own Sino-Irish heritage.
Known for her worldly tastes in contemporary art, cultivated in no small part by her collector parents John and Odette Rocha, Simone’s first foray into large-scale curation comes as no surprise, though is punctuated with unexpected choices. Widely-celebrated art stars like Louise Bourgeois and Roni Horn (both of whose work has been known to hang in Rocha’s boutiques) find their place alongside younger artists of her own generation: painters, photographers, video artists and sculptors unafraid to cross disciplines between art and fashion, or portray multi-faceted visions of womanhood that question contemporary identities and expressions of beauty. Hard and soft, domestic, urban, sexual and otherworldly, Rocha’s show unites local and international names within a white cube annex of Lismore Castle, the present day Irish seat of the Duke of Devonshire and a building with roots that reach back to the 12th century.
Dan Thawley Perhaps, as someone who knows your world, this is an obvious question. But why Girls Girls Girls?
Simone Rocha When I was bringing together all the artists for this exhibition, it became quite apparent that a lot of them were female artists. Many of the works that I was drawn to were outwardly not very feminine, but almost sweet and saccharine with very dark undertones lurking below. Cassi Namoda’s work features two conjoined twins – from afar it’s pastel, but upon closer inspection you notice the morose looks on their faces. There’s a slightly spooky, provocative take on femininity. I really liked the title Girls Girls Girls because it had a very provocative connotation, taking away the softness and the saccharine that you might associate at first glance with some of the works. And it’s also a title that I thought linked the diverse range of artists from different eras and ages.
DT Could you tell us about working at Lismore Castle? It’s such a historic space.
SR The gallery is attached to the castle, a beautiful historical building. I was very interested in the fact that the show was set in Ireland, in this surprising place. The actual space is an arts centre beside the castle. I was given free reign with the room, and it had many original features that couldn’t be tampered with, but I enjoyed working with those restrictions. There’s one main room where we’ve hung some of the larger works, like Sophie Barber, Genieve Figgis and Harley Weir’s pieces. Then there’s a smaller, more intimate gallery, where we’ve also had to do controlled lighting and temperature because we have the Alina Szapocznikow piece, which requires specific conditions. She’s with Cindy Sherman and Roni Horn. There’s a beautiful stone tower, in which I put Louise Bourgeois because I really thought she’s kind of the mother of it all, and she needed her own little room. In the last smaller room, I’ve asked the artist Josiane M.H. Pozi to screen her film. So everyone is in little couplings, which I think is quite nice.