NEVEN is delighted to present Special Day, a solo show of new sculptural and photographic work by Leo Costelloe. Continuing their interest in the semiotics and functions of adornment, decoration, and feminine archetype, Costelloe here turns their attention to the tropes and material cultures of the Western bride, and her enduring influence on – and subjection to – received notions of ideal femininity, beauty, romantic love, class, and spectacle in the popular imagination.

A bride in full regalia peers up at the gallery window. A 1930s doll, refurbished by Costelloe with toy doctor Joel Davidson and fitted in a traditional white lace wedding gown and veil, Bridal Shop Mannequin 1 (Finsbury Park) is part mannequin, part uncanny protagonist, both object and subject, a cake-topper, a product, an image. Aspirational and romantic, the wedding dress is also a motif entrenched in patriarchal tradition, operating on a symbolic level to infer status, beauty, tradition and distinguish the bride from her guests. In her essay “White Wedding Dress in the Midwest” (2014), Carrie Hertz notes that ‘in the hands of diverse actors, [wedding dresses] become products of labour, works of art, commodities, tools of transformation, overindulgence, or oppression, and tangible markers of individual and social identity. They are dynamic instruments wielded by more than the women who wear them.’ This tension is played out in the popular television show Say Yes to the Dress, in which brides-to-be are dressed and redressed to delighted gasps from onlookers, incentivised to varying degrees by desires of self-expression and legible conformity.

The commodification of feminine idealism is further invoked by two hair sculptures, titled after quintessential bridal styles: Romantic tendrils, Bouncy Curls. Displayed on the wall, they recall hunting trophies in hair nets and ready-made catalog styles, ready for the picking. Nearby, a reception-ready cutlery set combines silver with the trim of a lace garter, mother of pearl, ribbon, and pearls. Titled Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue (and a silver sixpence), the piece references the traditional Victorian English rhyme detailing what a bride should auspiciously wear for luck on her wedding day.

Superstition is further explored in Always & Forever..., a polaroid of a dove – sacred animal of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, and popular wedding iconography –, framed in an etched aluminium mount. Accompanying the dove is a second framed polaroid, this time a portrait of Costelloe’s frequent collaborator, the performance artist Chris Owen. Distinguished only by their veil, this bride is a stranger invocation of the archetypal figure, isolated from any aisle, reception, and groom. Crouched in dark grass, the image takes a visual cue from Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film The Virgin Suicides, loosely referencing Kirsten Dunst’s Lux Lisbon abandoned on a football pitch after an ill-fated one-night fling with suburban heartthrob Trip Fontaine.

By both invoking and estranging recognisable ritual motifs, the exhibition presents both catalogue and critique, at once the uncanny trousseau of the perfect day and the very marker of its fallacies. In exploring the artifice that often underscores our learned ideals, Costelloe assesses the marriage of pressure, perfectionism and capitalism in every little girl’s dream.