Mens Suits is based on clothing. Large amounts of men's clothing - suits, shirts, ties, gloves - all different, all hand-made and intimately detailed, and mostly appearing second hand. Surrogates for identity, they embody the desire to reveal and conceal, to be marked out as an individual and belong to a tribe. Arranged into three individual tableaux, they work together as collective entities rather than as individual items. All these items of clothing carry a feeling of having being used. They have had a life, dressing some body, and bear a sense of fatigue. Now they are waiting to be used again. Everything is mixed up and sorted in a different way, ordinary clothes brought together by their common fate. LeDray's sculptural ensemble imparts no specific stories. The clothes keep their secrets. But through this withholding, the sculpture invites reflection on conformity and difference, rejection and renewal, value and use. Rather than being 'social sculptures', LeDray's work takes material from ordinary life to make forms which address contemporary society in their own quietly compelling way. Mens Suits is an Artangel commission and has been in the making for the past three years. It is LeDray's first major presentation
Charles Ledray: Mens Suits
