{"id":26711,"date":"2025-10-30T14:41:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T18:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=26711"},"modified":"2025-10-30T16:42:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T20:42:05","slug":"barnes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2025\/10\/30\/barnes\/","title":{"rendered":"Wooden Folk Toys Meet Bauhaus Ballet In Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley\u2019s \u2018Fashion Play\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWooden friends\u201d began appearing in illustrator Lesley Barnes<\/a>\u2019s social media in 2019\u2014along with her pop-up book \u201cBauhaus Ballet.\u201d They were like flat, graphic, modernist geometric illustrations come to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the wooden figures Barnes hand-made with her collaborator, portrait painter Ross McAuley<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their wooden friends are the stars of \u201cLesley Barnes and Ross McAuley: Fashion Play,\u201d<\/a> which is on view at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, England, from July 12 to Nov. 2, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really wanted to capture the sense of endless possibility and adventure that fashion can offer,\u201d Barnes and McAuley say in a press release. \u201cWe hope our combinations of shapes, colours and pattern leave visitors with a sense of joy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>. When covid lockdown arrived in 2020, Barnes and McAuley began turning out whole troupes of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFashion Play\u201d takes its inspiration from Barnes\u2019s 2024 book of the same name\u2014a flip book divided in three sections, allowing readers to mix and match outfits and patterns. The exhibition features 33 of their handmade wooden sculptures\u2014plus books, painted wooden mobiles, a screenprint, and banners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9 Greg Cook 2025 or the respective creato<\/em>rs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley at “Fashion Play,” 2025. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Anna,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Ross McAuley, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Poncho Pedro, Anna and Ava,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Ross McAuley, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Wanda,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Ross McAuley, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Celine, Cece and Serge,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Ross McAuley, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Rita and Roberto,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Ross McAuley, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Kiko and Poppy on white,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Ross McAuley, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lesley
Lesley Barnes and Ross McAuley, “Fashion Play,” 2025. Installation view at YSP. (Photo \u00a9 Jo Crawford, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWooden friends\u201d began appearing in illustrator Lesley Barnes\u2019s social media in 2019\u2014along with her pop-up book \u201cBauhaus Ballet.\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107],"tags":[1328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26711"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26750,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26711\/revisions\/26750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}