Korean fashion designer and UTS postgraduate researcher Shinmi Park showcases her provocative and original work in her first major Australian exhibition, Shinmi Park: Changeability, the Fashion Trace at UTS Gallery from Tuesday 22 May.

Park's highly innovative explorations of the connection between fashion, art and architecture are being presented in association with the Fashion in Fiction Conference, a creative collaboration between the UTS Faculties of Design, Architecture and Building and Humanities and Social Sciences, to be held on 26 and 27 May.

UTS lecturer in fashion theory, Dr Vicki Karaminas, said fashion and architecture had always shared a reciprocal relationship based on common visual and intellectual principles.

"Architecture is making its presence felt in fashion through the use of pliable metals, membrane structures, lightweight glasses and flexible plastics," Karaminas said. "At the same time, contemporary architects are borrowing the techniques of pleating and draping from traditional tailoring to design buildings that are interactive, inflatable, and even portable.

"Taking fashion beyond the expression of trends, Park's work develops types of fashion structures that reinvent the garment as a sensual transaction between the body, interior space and the eye.

"Obsessively detailed, the intricately layered textures of Park's designs appear deceptively light and playful. Each garment is constructed by a kind of modular interconnection between individual pieces that can be disassembled and recombined into multiple sculptural forms according to the will of the wearer."

Park says, "Fashion fulfils its fundamental function when worn by humans. Whether that function is to protect the body or to create a symbolic meaning, it displays its worth when met by a body,"

"The action of choosing clothes and wearing them – the action of making style – is a kind of art as well a sphere within design. I think that all individuals are a living form of artwork."

Karaminas says, "Park's work considers the dialogue between modern architecture and contemporary fashion in concept as well as practice. By borrowing devices from both disciplines such as the spiral, the fold and zippers to provide the structural basis for her soft sculptures, her designs are no longer static structures for wearing but metaphors for urban life."

Having received her doctoral degree from Kookmin University and a Masters degree from Ewha Women's University, Korea, Park was the Director of the London base of design label Michiko Koshino, Chief Stylist for the sports brand Fila (Korea) and Style Editor of various fashion magazines over the past eight years. She specialises in practice-led design research and is a member of the Korea Fashion and Culture Association.

The Fashion in Fiction Conference will host international and local scholars from fields such as English literature, architecture and interiors, history, fashion, performance art, cultural studies and creative writing as they debate the role fashion has played in fictional and non-fictional narratives from the 19th century to the present.

Shinmi Park: Changeability, the Fashion Trace is at UTS Gallery until Friday 22 June. The exhibition will be opened on 22 May by SBS TV newsreader and host of the network's Fashionista program, Lee Lin Chin.

UTS Gallery is on Level 4 of the Peter Johnson building, 702 Harris St, Ultimo. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 12 to 6pm.