Out of Step

Out of Step was a collaborative photography project by Alberta artists Lynn Malin and Elizabeth Beauchamp. Concerned with the homogenized dullness of contemporary retail window display, the artists sought out an example of non corporate, individualized window dressing. They found it in the windows of Amsterdam Rentals, a special events clothing retail outlet on the outskirts of downtown Edmonton. The large scale photographic prints of Amsterdam Rental’s window display are familiar and creepy at the same time. The unfashionable clothes and decrepit mannequins that wear them are a far cry from the slick displays of trendy corporate retail chains like the Gap or Club Monaco. They are impoverished, isolated, and representative of a time when shopkeepers did their best with what they had, answering to their customers rather than a distant advertising department. Out of Step transformed the downtown windows of eyelevelgallery into a retail space that could be on the outskirts of almost anywhere – a space representative of a lifestyle that is quietly dying, to be replaced by the retail aesthetic of corporate globalization.