BEASTMODE22 ULTRAVIRUS wearables are born from the brain of graphics + textile artist, stylist, costume designer, eco-goblin Georgia Harper, who operates on Gadigal land. This is a limited collection birthed from up-cycled merchandise created by Harper in their studio over the past year. Harper originally graphic designed the main (black + white) artworks featured throughout the collection for ULTRAVIRUS merch hoodies. Instead of selling those pieces, Harper was inspired to use the fabrics source AS material for a larger body of work, pushing the boundaries of what “merch” can be. The hoodies were upcycled, with other vintage and second hand materials such as pillows, ties, blankets, hosiery, baby harnesses and other oddities collected by Harper. Harper designs for and from an apocalyptic late-stage capitalistic unworlding and reworlding consumption k-hole by constantly questioning their own existence within it. (I Shop, Therefore I Am) right???
As a strict second-hand collector and maker, Harper sees clothing as memory banks to manipulate and dance with. Fashion in our current climate-changed neoliberal hellscape, characterised by drop-shipping, mass manufacture of low-quality clothing from hotbeds of modern slavery, and trend-based consumption, has seen the erasure of sentimentality. Harper’s design practice aims to operate at a deeper level of consciousness than the modern consumption cycle of desire-acquisition-use-disillusionment. Slow down, question, cherish and connect to local makers, there are memories to be found in cloth.
ULTRAVIRUS is a content aggregator, net.label, curator + exhibitor, host and parasite, edu-tainer, divinator, facilitator, surfer, scholar. Since its inception in the mind of Ella + Thorsten de Luxe in 2018, ULTRAVIRUS has expanded its universe from web theory, digital art and events to releasing music through a net.label, and now, wearables.
