Noble Rot uncovers the hidden history of fashion by showing aspects rarely displayed or considered, such as the interiors of garments, trims, the incomplete, the mended or the imperfect. An exhibition revealing how clothes are pieced together in a puzzle of fabrics, material and embellishments; and how they fall apart, change colour, soil, and decay to the final, ephemeral delicacy of their disintegration. Noble Rot considers the fugitive nature of fashion, the aesthetics of decay and the politics of display. This exploratory exhibition attempts to question various taboos and semiotics relating to dirt, rags, the frivolous, the fashionable, the exhibited and the excluded. It gives pause for reflection about the experience of clothing when it is no longer ‘fashionable’ or pristine. Is there a poetic resonance, a haunting beauty in the funeral of fashion, the noble rot emanating from an old garment, or the sense of remorse captured in the worn-out?
Excert from Robyn Healy’s essay on Noble Rot, published in the Noble Rot catelogue