Alex and Georgie Cleary: 5 Stories on Creative Collaboration
In partnership with Melbourne Art Fair 2024
The siblings behind Australian fashion label Alpha60 reflect on working with Patricia Piccinini and Brendan Huntley, and introduce their latest project for Melbourne Art Fair.
Georgie and Alex Cleary. Courtesy Alpha60.
Siblings Alex and Georgie Cleary are 'hustlers since way back'.
The duo's working relationship began on their parent's rose farm, where they sold flowers together on the side of the road—an enterprise which expanded to selling tea towels, potpourri, muffins, and later champagne, skateboards, and t-shirts at the local market.
With past careers in graphic design (Georgie) and aeronautical engineering (Alex), their fashion label Alpha60 emerged organically over time, beginning when Georgie made Alex a printed t-shirt to go out in one night when he had nothing to wear. The shirt was soon requested by growing numbers of friends, and from there the brand grew. 'We just made stuff that we liked, and that's still what we do,' Georgie said.
Alpha60 officially launched in 2004 at the National Gallery of Art in Canberra, as part of the events programme for their Vivienne Westwood retrospective. Since then, Alpha60 have opened multiple stores across Australia and New Zealand, and the siblings find ways to continually collaborate with artists and galleries.
For Melbourne Art Fair 2024, they are presenting two project rooms with Firstdraft, a non-profit contemporary art space in Sydney (Gadigal Country), and Gertrude, an artist studio programme in Melbourne (Naarm), as well as their own booth. There they will launch three new bag designs—the product of their latest collaborations with Australian artists Mikala Dwyer, Lottie Consalvo, and Kate Rohde.
As part of the fair's programme, the string ensemble Lux Australis and dance company Lucy Guerin Inc will perform in Alpha60's Chapter House space on Flinders Lane—which also recently hosted the Ghetto Biennale exhibition for Rising festival. The Clearys spoke with Ocula Magazine about collecting, their artistic collaborations, and what's next.
On collecting, and a favourite work:
GC: Funnily enough, we've collected a lot of things that are exactly the same—from the same artist, same gallery, same exhibition. It's funny because our houses are so different, but we've got a lot of the same art.
AC: Brendan Huntley was the first, or maybe Riley Payne—a couple of [works] from Tolarno. We've both got a few of the Brendan Huntleys, which we've collected over the years. We've been friends with Brendan a long time. Both of those things led to us doing a collaboration with him.
A favourite is a little sculpture by Patricia Piccinini called The Listener. It's a pig-baby flappy thing that sits on a speaker; its big ear flaps down like it's listening. We call it Lizzie. She's a little bit terrifying, but really, really sweet at the same time. She's got these cute, big eyes. It makes me so happy when I wake up in the morning and walk past and greet it.
The most exciting artists on your radar?
GC: We are currently working with Mikala Dwyer, that's been a massive privilege. Obviously she is not a new artist, or newly established. She was described to us once as 'the Martin Margiela of the art world'. We actively try and work with her at her studio to try and absorb some of her cool.
Also, Elyas Alavi—he had an exhibition at Gertrude Glasshouse. His stuff's really interesting, and he's got a really interesting life story. His exhibition is based on dreams and he's doing sketches. He's very much one to watch.
On collaborating with Patricia Piccinini:
GC: A lot of our collaborations have come through either getting to know the artist through collecting their work, or getting to know them through Alpha. Patricia lives near me and I bump into her all the time. We used to chat on the street; she was always like, 'Oh, I'm wearing Alpha.'
When Heide asked us who we'd want to collaborate with, I thought of Patricia. I always say it was easy to ask her because we were friends, but didn't really expect she would say yes. But she did. We both made something that neither of us had done before—the blankets. She really loved the keepsake-ness of them.
On working with Brendan Huntley:
GC: Working with Brendan was just extreme, in the best way. For years we were like, 'Let's do something'. We were just waiting for the right thing to come up. I always say that after a session with Brendan, you need a nap. He has so much energy, and is so excellent. It went from, 'Oh, let's make a few little mats' to this 32-metre-long custom-made carpet.
AC: The whole thing ended up with Brendan doing contemporary dance on the carpet in a zoot suit that he'd painted, holding an LED light, with music. We got opera singers, and an original score that we had made by Mikey Young from [Melbourne rock band] Eddy Current Suppression Ring.
Every time we met it got more and more exciting. We did textiles, and a brass clock for the wall. It's great in those collabs to do things that are a little bit different for us—not just garments with prints on them, but to do things that are a little bit more, which pushes us a little bit, and pushes Brendan a little bit.
What to look forward to at Melbourne Art Fair 2024:
GC: We love that each gallery has one artist—either one artist or one theme, but I think it's one artist for most [galleries]. I think that's really strong. I like that you'll really get to see a body of work, rather than a jumble of stuff.
AC: We're also working with Gertrude Contemporary. Their studios are well-known for their plywood and exposed cross-beams, so we're replicating that in printed fabric for the interior of their stall. That'll look quite cool. The fabric will be repurposed into tote bags and things like that after the fair.
GC: Melbourne Art Fair provided us with a platform; often we're bringing artists into our world of fashion. We're collaborating with three artists—Mikala Dwyer, Lottie Consalvo, and Kate Rohde—to create three bags which we're launching at the fair.
AC: The idea is that each bag not only sort of represents the artist's work, but also their personality, or their use of that bag. Some are a little more practical or utilitarian, and others are more decorative.
GC: Mikala was like, 'I'm always carrying heaps of stuff around', so it needed to be more of a practical day bag. Lottie gave me the brief of an Italian widow nonna—she has nostalgic memories of her Italian grandmother's bags. That was cool—a brief I've never been given before, and probably won't get again. It's good to be told what to do sometimes. And Kate makes these amazing, colourful resin urns. She's going to hand-make resin handles for the bags. The outcomes are excellent. —[O]
