Jane Polkinghorne
“The Year of Denim”

The Year of Denim started as a year-long joke that required serious commitment.

For a year, from my birthday on April 30, 2009 until April 30 2010, I wore denim every day and blogged (https://yearofdenim.wordpress.com) about every outfit. This wasn’t about wearing a single pair of jeans for a year: I committed to not double but triple denim. Every day I wore a denim top, a denim bottom and at least one denim accessory. And not only blue denim but all shades of denim, including denim and the phenomenon of 'jeggings' (leggings that look like jeans) and anything printed to resemble denim.

The project had a few inspirations. One was the United Nations designated “International Year of…”. Back in late 2008 I was in an op shop browsing the denim and said out loud “The UN should do a year of denim.” In the absence of the UN committing to a Year of Denim, I committed myself.

I was also responding in part to many year-long projects that some artists in Sydney were doing at the time, who were in turn inspired by the year-long performances of Tehching Hsieh. They were and remain “serious” artists. In stark contrast, my practice has often functioned as a kind of joke, even at times a piss-take. But one that I have committed to for 30 years now.

The Year of Denim brought together strands of my creative practice and my life – performance and persona, humour and play, op shopping as a creative practice and archival research, a tabloid sensibility and an art education steeped in conceptual practices, art and the everyday. The Year of Denim, in providing space for these interests to intersect, allowed me to be absurd and playful, dedicated and serious at a moment many of us face as artists where I was thinking "can I be arsed continuing?" In committing to a pointless project I rediscovered joy in creative practice, pleasure in repetition and seriousness through intent.