Very shirty

By ADRIAN TAHOURDIN

“A shirt is the closest to the heart, so that is why I use shirts. The person is there.”

Thus the Finnish sculptor Kaarina Kaikkonen whose latest work, co-commissioned by the Brighton Festival, is on exuberant display in the high-ceilinged Fabrica art gallery, a former Regency church in the centre of Brighton.

If you feel you've become too sexy for your shirt, why not send it to Kaarina Kaikkonen? She clearly has a use for it. The shirts in this exhibit were donated by Brighton residents and will then be passed to Oxfam.

Kaikkonen is, according to the display leaflet, “best known for several major works using hundreds of discarded men’s jackets, items that have a highly charged and personal significance for her. Though ambiguous in meaning, her works evoke associations of personal loss, collective memory and local histories”.

Her work has been displayed outdoors to wonderful effect, where the shirts take on the appearance of linked soaring kites.

For good measure the artist draped the clock tower in the centre with items of clothing (see below), lighting up a dull sky.

The shirt hang, or "Blue Route", is on until May 27.