What do you wear to an exhibition? Dressing For The Dream Space looks at what we wear to exhibitions, galleries, and museums. Employing Sheldon Annis’ concept of the dream space [1] and Gaynor Kavanagh’s seminal text on dream spaces in the museum [2], this exhibition explores the immaterial spaces our minds go to when we visit an exhibition. The dream space is conceived as the imaginary, emotional, and sensorial memories we encounter in a museum.

In the dream space, curators have little control over what emerges in the visitor’s mind. Personal associations and recollections are conjured as our footsteps slow down and our minds wander: the song stuck in your head, unfinished to-do lists, that scene from a film you watched a month ago, a childhood memory.

Four exhibition-goers were invited to select an outfit of their choice—one that they have each worn to an exhibition before. Personal stories of exhibition visits, gathered during the research for a zine of the same title, also form part of the exhibition, suggesting autobiographic ways to contemplate the dream space. By recounting memories and experiences of exhibition-going, the dream spaces of each subject take shape through the photographs they took; the thoughts they mused on; and the clothes they wore.

Through the lens of what we wear, Dressing For The Dream Space is an invitation to ponder on the ways we dress, look, and remember in exhibitions. 

Notes

1. Sheldon Annis (1986) ‘The museum as a staging ground for symbolic action’, Museum.

2. Gaynor Kavanagh (2000) Dream Spaces: Memory and the Museum.

*Please note that the venue has stairs.