“Wooden friends” began appearing in illustrator Lesley Barnes’s social media in 2019—along with her pop-up book “Bauhaus Ballet.” They were like flat, graphic, modernist geometric illustrations come to life.
Some of the wooden figures Barnes hand-made with her collaborator, portrait painter Ross McAuley, were flat cutouts. Others seemed assembled from wooden balls and cones and cylinders, shapes one might turn on a lathe. And painted in eye-popping polkadots, harlequin diamonds, and stripes, in brilliant blue, red, green, black, white.
“We really wanted to capture the sense of endless possibility and adventure that fashion can offer,” Barnes and McAuley say in a press release. “We hope our combinations of shapes, colours and pattern leave visitors with a sense of joy.”
Barnes and McAuley are based in Glasgow, where Barnes is from and McAuley arrived from his native Toronto. Her illustrations are rooted in midcentury modern design (Mary Blair! Alexander Girard!). Their wooden figures were part folk craft and part something out of a 1920s Bauhaus costume party. When covid lockdown arrived in 2020, Barnes and McAuley began turning out whole troupes of them.
“Fashion Play” takes its inspiration from Barnes’s 2024 book of the same name—a flip book divided in three sections, allowing readers to mix and match outfits and patterns. The exhibition features 33 of their handmade wooden sculptures—plus books, painted wooden mobiles, a screenprint, and banners.
