Coventry City of Culture Trust and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum are delighted to present “Be Yourself; Everyone Else Is Already Taken” by the Coventry born artist, designer and activist Daniel Lismore. This exhibition in his hometown is the first time that his work has gone on display in the UK.

The exhibition features a major installation ‘An Army of My Life’, which takes inspiration from the Terracotta Army, and features 50 3D sculptures, each of which are modelled on the artist and including a cast of his face, manifestations of Lismore’s life living as sculpture.

The life-size (6’4”) sculptures are fashioned in Lismore’s elaborate and extravagant ensembles, expressions of body adornment and conceptual thinking. They combine haute couture with items from his personal collection of nearly 7,000 unique curiosities, including charity-shop finds, yards of vintage fabrics and found objects.

The exhibition examines social, historical and cultural themes central to Lismore’s work and life living as sculpture. He has been a noted advocate of sustainable fashion, which sits at the heart of his artistic practice, a design philosophy that espouses creative re-use, upcycling of materials and reduction of impact on the environment. His relationships with creative communities around the world also inform his work and activism.

Lismore has been called ‘England’s most eccentric dresser’ by Vogue, exhibited around the world, and has designed costumes for the English National Opera. He was Creative Director of luxury label Sorapol where he dressed Nicki Minaj, Mariah Carey, Naomi Campbell, Cara Delevingne, Adam Ant and Boy George amongst others. Many of the pieces designed for his celebrity clientele will be on display in Coventry.

(Imagery from Daniel Lismore's book 'Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken.' Photo credit - Colin Douglas Gray, courtesy of SCAD)

A specially made publication for the UK premiere of the exhibition, and Coventry UK City of Culture, explores, excavates and celebrates Daniel’s unique journey from being raised in Coventry through to international fame. This will feature previously unseen private archive & materials including photos, found objects, ephemera, artworks & sketchbooks, personal materials documenting his journey from schooldays through adolescence - a tapestry of his journey from childhood to his true self living as sculpture.

“Be Yourself; Everyone Else Is Already Taken” was first presented in 2016, co-curated by Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) Atlanta USA and exhibited at SCAD FASH: Museum of Fashion and Film. Since its original presentation, the exhibition has been presented in Basel Miami 2016, Iceland 2018, Naples 2019 and Poland in November 2019. For this homecoming exhibition, many of the work will be enhanced and expanded, with previously unseen works on display.

Colour, texture and shape play an important role in the creation of Daniel Lismore’s living sculptures. Rather than working to a theme, Lismore is greatly drawn in and influenced by what he sees. He gathers objects and materials from all over the world, instinctively working with their form to design his sculptures. His only rule is that ‘there’s no such thing as too much. More is always more.’

Lismore fuses his expertise in haute couture and fashion with a motivation to be creative with whatever medium or material he can find. His concept is to use the body as a canvas and advocate the right to be truly authentic.

Set against a vibrant, neon-coloured backdrop, this space presents a selection of Lismore’s monochromatic sculptures. The faces looking out from them are casts of Lismore’s own face, each hand-painted to match his striking makeup palette. Through his sculptures, Lismore invites us to think about personal identity and the expression of individual style and taste.

In 2018 Daniel Kramer, Artistic Director of English National Opera (ENO), visited Daniel Lismore’s exhibition at the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik in Iceland. Following this, Lismore was invited to design 70 otherworldly costumes for ENO’s 2019 production of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus, a story of love, loss and transformation. This huge commission was the first time Lismore had designed costumes for the stage and was a pivotal moment in his career. Lismore debuted one of the costumes at Naomi Campbell’s 2019 event for Fashion for Relief, a charitable organisation created in 2005 that has raised funds for environmental and humanitarian causes.

To create the work, Lismore used a lucid dreaming technique, tapping into his unconscious to conjure up his creation. He was also inspired by the surrealism of the story and the music of the production. It was important for Lismore to bring his usual techniques to the project, embellishing the costumes with 400,000 reignited Swarovski crystals, and reusing and recycling materials and costumes from ENO’s archive.

In this exhibition, Lismore presents costumes from The Mask of Orpheus: The Oracle, The ‘Hellish’ Nurse, Orpheus and Eurydice, Dionysus and The Pink Monsters, including the costume Lismore debuted for Fashion for Relief.

Daniel Lismore’s practice is rooted in political and social action, from advocating sustainable fashion to campaigning for climate change and LGBTQIA+ rights. Lismore brings together his activism and artistic practice to create work that incites, disrupts and inspires. He describes getting dressed as ‘suiting up to go out and face the world, to change the world’.

Lismore is an ambassador of Cool Earth, a climate-change charity that repopulates rainforest trees, fights deforestation and provides financial assistance and resources to the communities who live there. He was the face of H&M’s Close the Loop campaign to encourage recycling of clothes and has worked closely with Vivienne Westwood on her climate revolution projects, notably to stop fracking in the UK. Lismore also undertakes voluntary work for charity New World International in Kenya to improve living conditions for communities. In 2021 he worked with Greenpeace on their summer campaign against destructive fishing around the UK.

Lismore offers his support to human rights issues and journalistic freedom movements. He supports LGBTQIA+ people who live in the UK and in countries where it is illegal to be themselves and he campaigns to raise awareness of discrimination within those communities. Working with schools and universities and delivering online talks, Lismore shares his personal story with people of all backgrounds, genders and sexualities. He has recently been involved in campaigns to reform the 2014 Gender Recognition Act and to ban conversion therapy.

These sculptures showcase Lismore’s belief that if an artwork has a purpose, then his purpose is activism.

The sculptures in this space reflect Daniel Lismore’s journey into the fashion world, his involvement with London’s queer club scene and his obsession with popular culture. A Pop Art inspired piece, Countess, features a reconstruction of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can and Marilyn Monroe bed linens, while another of Lismore’s sculptures Lady-in-Waiting is a reproduction of an i-D magazine cover.

Newly commissioned for this exhibition, Lismore’s sculpture The Prime Minister celebrates and platforms queer culture. Emerging from the sculpture are the colours that make up the Progress Pride flag, the most recent rendition designed by Valentino Vecchietti. The Progress Pride flag was designed to represent all people across and within the LGBTQIA+ community and has become a universal symbol for queer people. The Prime Minister promotes inclusivity and Lismore’s ethos to be your true self in a time where existences can be wrongfully questioned and challenged.

Lismore also presents a series of photographs of himself as a living sculpture taken by Vidar Logi in Iceland. These works challenge us to consider whether our environment can make space for true expression.

This exhibition plays homage to Daniel Lismore’s earliest inspiration – the Chinese Terracotta Army. Much like the warriors of the Terracotta Army, each of Lismore’s sculptures is unique, but together they form a united cohort, standing in solidarity in a regimented fashion.

These sculptures are some of Lismore’s most embellished works, comprising metals, jewels, armour, chainmail and more. Lismore incorporates the idea of clothing as armour into his sculptures as a symbol of protection. He was the first person to wear armour to Parliament since it was made illegal by Oliver Cromwell. There is an accompanying soundscape by composer Einar Örn Benediktsson of recordings of the sculptures in motion.

In his 2019 TED Talk My Life as a Work of Art, Lismore declares:

Picture yourself in a giant jewellery box with all the beautiful things that you have ever seen in your life. Then imagine that your body is a canvas, and on that canvas you have a mission to create a masterpiece using the content of your giant jewellery box. Once you’ve created your masterpiece you might think ’Wow, I created that, this is who I am today’. Then you would pick up your house keys walk out the door into the real world, maybe take public transport into the centre of your town. Possibly walk along the streets or even go shopping. Well, that’s my life every day. When I walk out the door, these artworks are me. I am art.