Ericaamerica are known for great fashion. No… scrap that – they’re known for exceedingly amazing fashion, particularly menswear. But more and more Ericaamerica – who comprise of design duo Erica Wardle and Lucas Bowers – are becoming known for installations which fuse fashion, art and history into one unified habitat of wonderment. It’s a skill the team have lent to the Nick Cave exhibition currently being housed at the WA Museum, the pair creating a homage to Cave in the foyer of the exhibition space, a homage aptly titled Cave of Wonders.
This installation – or experience – draws on the wealth of pop culture surrounding Nick Cave, brings in historical elements from the WA Museum’s 4 000 000 piece archive and fuses it all together with Ericaamerica’s unique design aesthetic. The result is a space which explores the historical and cultural context of one of our country’s leading creative talents and musicians. And the space is made all the more magnificent by the stained glass effect created on the foyer’s old school opening.
‘This doorway naturally lent itself to being a stained glass window,’ Bowers told OUTinPerth hours before their exhibition was due to open last month. ‘We were wanting to build something that was a cross between a museum and a church because of the religious connotations in Nick Cave’s music. It’s a play on the altar and the museum, the idea of sacred objects being put somewhere. Really we wanted it to be about the old world museum, not the new world museum.’
Also included in the small show are two signature outfits: one representing Ericaamerica’s main menswear label and the second representing the label’s baby-sister, Dressage, which is dedicated entirely to womenswear. ‘These two looks have been created specifically for the show,’ Bowers added. ‘The gold male look is something we’ve never done before and may never do again, but this outfit was taken specifically from one song by Nick Cave called Big Jesus Trashcan.
‘It contains a character described as having a gold suit that left to us has become this sleazy cross a street side preacher and a ’70s pimp. We’ve taken these songs and rather than literally translate them we want to do our take on them in our world. The clothes are not related to our collection that’s about to be released. These are all custom made.
‘The other outfit will be a female representing our Dressage range, but more specifically we chose a female because we wanted to deal with that contrast between the masculine and the feminine and the difference between the two. In Cave’s work men tend to be sleazy, slimy beasts who tend to be quite dangerous to these beautiful elegant women who have this exulted status who as soon as they are touched by men will be poisoned somehow. It plays on the idea of the divine and the ugly I guess.’
Bowers remembers first seeing Cave early one morning on Rage at the age of 14 and since then he has gone on to become a huge fan. So much so that now the team that is Bowers and Wardle have even turned to woodwork to create a Mercy Seat from scratch, a cross between an old world electric chair flourished with motives from the Ark of the Covenant, the top of which is called the Mercy Seat.
‘We liked the way Nick Cave was metaphorically mixing the electric chair (in the song The Mercy Seat) with the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark being the place of all holiness,’ Bowers added. ‘But no-one could look at it except Moses. Anyone else who did would be struck dead, and usually in Christian mythology by something that was electricity zapping out at them. So the similarities are quite poetic.’
For now, Ericaamerica are turning their focus back to fashion. Their new collection of menswear is about to be launched, as is their new online store (www.ericaamerica.com.au)… so if you’re a fan, hold tight – it should all be up in two month’s time. But in the meantime, Cave of Wonders runs until July 19.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
