Mannequin March 2014

Mannequin March returns to New Lynn following the sucess of last year’s pop up exhibition. Much like a museum diorama, window displays operate as a portal for the imagination. Mannequin March invites the public to complete these stories via an urban art trail where New Lynn shop windows are taken over by Purfex mannequins re-interpreted by contemporary artists Matthew Cowan, Lauren Lysaght and Andrea du Chatenier, last year’s Peoples Choice mannequin artist Hoteera Riri, and Upstairs Gallery’s Sean Hurst and Maxine Jepson.

The growth of cities and technology set the stage for the development of window displays at the front of stores. Window gazing became a popular pasttime, which was eventually termed “window shopping”. Though ‘fake people’ have come in several guises through history, none have had such a direct fantasy correlation to the illusion of our own fantasies than the store mannequin.

As Ralph Pucci, an innovator in the mannequin industry, stated “mannequins are, as always, a reflection of the ideal, not how we are but how we’d like to be.” These artists reinterpret this theme with a result that makes shoppers stop and look twice.

21 March - 24 March 2014