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FashionMusicArtCulture

to Be Collaborates with adidas Taekwando to Spotlight Four Creatives

24 January 2025

Tasked with celebrating individual practice, we teamed up with adidas Taekwando to showcase the work of Rose Letho, Georgia Morgan, Ilkin Kurt and Chloe Borich.

Georgia Morgan

Georgia Morgan is a Tamil-Australian artist who makes the personal universal. She constructs offerings on her own terms, elevating notetaking, sketches and references from daily life into dreamy hand-drawn emblems. Theology is a constant unifier for the Sydney-born, Melbourne-based artist, as she often thinks of Puja, a Hindu act of worship that offers physical objects—including gold, fruit or flowers—or holy imagery to god. On a casual soda-fuelled stroll through her basement studios at Gertrude Contemporary, she reflected on her childhood in a multifaith upbringing and home, where she was surrounded by totems and religious iconography, which she has come to interpret into her artworks, self-described as “devotional and aspirational.”

Abstraction elevates Georgia’s references to a higher realm. Her practice is broad, including large-scale site-specific installations, photographs, videos, paintings and ceramics. As an art school graduate, she champions spontaneity and a do-it-yourself approach—an artist who gets in the zone, noise-cancellers blaring. Her latest body of work, P.L.U.R. (Peace Love Unity Respect), exhibited (and completely sold) at Neon Parc, honours self, connection and club culture. Cue adidas Taekwondos. The history of art informs her practice too, with motifs and texts deftly referencing modern and ancient artists. On her social media, her works appear as if set props were placed precariously. Some pots are rounder, others tall, all bulbous and washed with pastel tones of orange, cyan, pink and green. Plus, she isn’t afraid to stick her head into them. Why? To hear their unique signatures, of course! “Each pot has its own sound, like the way seashells do. A resounding humming, low vibrational noise, which is nice because I’m pretty high frequency!”

Chloe Borich

Chloe Borich is a freelance writer and artist liaison for the vaunted Sydney gallery Sullivan and Strumpf. She writes mostly about contemporary art and culture for publications across Australia and New Zealand, with a specific focus on contemporary and abstract work by artists such as Jedda-Daisy Culley and Renée Estée. Good writing, she tells us from her lofty Darlinghurst closet, should be a balance of spontaneity and depth, brought about by research and style. Chloe has an instinctive take on the perennial question of when a work is finished, believing that pieces of writing (and artworks) often announce their own completion. Whether or not the author/maker is willing to listen is another question, she muses. Chloe knows that writing doesn’t always come easy and requires a daring attitude and major perseverance. “It’s something that you need to reach into your mind for. Reach out into the world for.” She made sure to still declare her love for the craft, surrounded by foam surfboards, seventies-style dresses and abstract paintings that had not yet been hung.

Ilkin Kurt

Fashion creative Ilkin Kurt has seen a lot. With job titles like Creative Director, Buyer, Designer, Consultant, Ilkin’s industry knowledge gives her insights into the core identity of a brand. Curled up in the cosiness of her almost two-year-old daughter’s playroom, Ilkin told us that creativity cannot be separated from authenticity, for it relates to an individual’s personal freedom. Notably, the colour of your hair or the sneakers you wear. “The main thing with fashion is expressing yourself, right? There are so many people around the world, especially in smaller countries, who are shut down by their parents. Dressing is their own small way of expressing themselves.”

Raised in Turkey, Ilkin was surrounded by a family of artisans, who fostered her sense of creativity and curation. She cherishes a global outlook, drawing inspiration from decentred geographies and seeing fashion as a key part of world history. Take the colour white, which, for Ilkin, evokes the complexities of holy places like mosques, synagogues, churches. “You see people in Middle Eastern countries always covering themselves in white, or even during Rumi, in a holy way. If someone passes, they wrap their body in white cloth. Fashion can be seen as shallow, but it can actually tell you so much about history.”

Rose Letho

Rose Letho is a hair and make-up artist with tomorrow’s touch. She let us into her personal cathedral, a white-carpeted apartment in Fitzroy’s North. Her cream-tiled, light-filled bathroom was gilded with photos of loved ones, heirlooms and trinkets that remind her of her grandmother’s house and her vivid pink sixties bathroom, where she dug through treasure troves of lipsticks and eye shadows. “There were gigantic Coral Colours powder puffs in a cobalt blue plastic container,” she tells us. Over time, her understanding of beauty has evolved, wearing less and less. Like many youngsters, Rose started using make-up to conceal acne during what she calls the OC era. “My brother and I were six and a half years apart, and his friends were so cool. There was such a huge age gap, but I wanted to be like them. Step into their shoes.”

Rose has contributed as beauty director on shoots for the likes of the to Be Walter Van Bierendonck cover story and Raga Malak campaigns. She has also expanded her techniques and aesthetics on the international show circuit, where she has been on the make-up teams of Isamaya French for Junya Watanabe and Vivienne Westwood and Thomas De Kluyver’s for Gucci, Simone Rocha and KNWLS. To Rose, style should be fun, not a way to hide. Now, she focuses on health and the health of her skin and hair.

There are no shortcuts for the blonde stalwart, as these can be harmful to “your body and your self-esteem.” “If you’re constantly trying to change something, like wearing fake nails all the time, destroying your nail beds, or always straightening your hair with harsh chemicals, you’ll get a negative reaction. And you might not feel as good as you’re hoping to feel. Less is more.”

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