The three garments on display are 'semi-living' sculptures in the form of miniature jackets with which the artists ironically approach the utopian ideal of growing leather clothes without the need to kill animals. As the growth process is essential to these artworks, they are displayed in incubators that allow them to continue growing throughout the exhibition period.
Victimless Leather is grown out of cell lines that form a living layer of tissue supported by biodegradable polymers in the form of miniature stitch-less coat-like shapes. The work addresses the moral implications of wearing parts of dead animals for protective and aesthetic reasons, and raises ethical questions about our exploitation and manipulation of other living beings, examining the validity of technological promises promoted as a solution to resolve them. Also on display are previous versions of 'victimless leather tissue' that have been fixed in Petri dishes.
TC&A is an award-winning artist group hosted by and centrally involved in SymbioticA, the art and science collaborative research laboratory at the University of Western Australia, which received the prestigious Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for Hybrid Art in 2007.
