Stage One Exhibition

'You Do Not Have To Be Your Mother' (2011)

'You Do Not Have To Be Your Mother' (2011) installation views

Gloria Steinem, described as an 'outspoken figure on behalf of women's rights and the pro-choice movement' once claimed 'I didn't know that I had a choice for a long time. I didn't want to get married and have children, but I thought it was inevitable, and so, I kept saying: not right now. I kept putting it off. After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!'

The exhibition will run from 30th November to 2nd December in the Chelsea Triangle Space, with the private view taking place 29th from 5-7pm.

My partner recently introduced me to the work of Emily Barletta; her use of thread and yarn was a particular inspiration to the experimental piece below. Works such as 'Untitled (Growth #2)' are, to me, remniscent of lace, and suggest a fragile delicacy - an essence which I hope to have captured and incorporated in the works below. Developing from my previous work, I began to look into ideas of the 'maternal female', and their relation to body image; having struggled with eating disorders from my early teens, I found the connections between female identity and disordered eating incredibly interesting. Could my own problems, as suggested by a therapist, have stemmed from fear of an adult female body, resulting from a lack of understanding of the biological changes occurring in puberty? Was it an unconscious 'rebellion at maternal domestic femininity' and a rejection of 'hips, stomach and breasts', and ultimately female body functions, suggested in the works of Susan Bordo? Analogies to changing our bodies with changing the 'cut of [our] clothes', and the suggested malleability of the human body are areas I am keen to explore in future works.

Untitled, (2011) thread and plastic

Untitled, (2011) thread and PVA glue

Untitled, (2011) thread and PVA glue

A seminar on Mary Kelly's 'Re-writing Modernist Criticism' today made me consider the ways in which we as artists use our body. Having studied Media, I was intrigued in her application of semiotics and the science of signs to her art work, forcing us to examine what goes without saying, and to "make explicit what one implicitly knows", particularly in relation to the body. Considering the application of signs, I began to consider the use of photographs as indexical signs - implying a previous presence and providing almost a print of that moment. Developing on these theories, I experimented with the pieces below, printing my body onto bed sheets, using printing ink and acrylic paint.

Untitled, (2011) monoprint & watercolour on photographic print

Untitled, (2011) embroidered photograph

Untitled, (2011) collograph print on crocheted wool

Untitled, (2011) collograph print on paper

Untitled, (2011) embroidered polaroid

Untitled, (2011) monoprint & watercolour on photographic print

A selection of recent works, considering ideas of memory, childhood and female genealogy.

Barry Flanagan

Barry Flanagan's latest exhibition 'Early Works 1965-1982' at the Tate Britain focuses upon his interests in materials and sculptural processes, exploring mediums such as cloth, plaster and sand. To me, Flanagan's work is almost like an ongoing experiment into the properties of particular materials, creating an almost alien world, in which anything seems possible., reflecting his interest in 'pataphysics' 'the science of imaginary solutions'. Pieces such as 'Four Casb 2 '67', right, appear almost to be like an absurd landscape created through pillars and rope; he is able to create a very surreal sensation for me as a viewer, in which I feel like I am entering into his own "world", in which we are forced to look at common materials with new eyes, and consider their potential beyond the ordinary.

A trip home to the BALTIC

Though excited to see the 2011 Turner Prize myself, particularly being displayed in my home city of Gateshead, it was a friend of mine who insisted I had to see Karla Black's work as he felt it related well to my own. 'Black's work is often infused with a sense of the processes behind it, processes which can evoke traditional feminine occupations' (Cain, 2011) and 'bridges the experience of tangible matter with the intimacy of memory or the subconscious... suggestion of performance psychologically involves the viewer with the making process, provoking instinctive responses' and the 'lost world of early childhood'. I personally found her work the most powerful of the show - ironic, as it visually it would seem the most muted and delicate. The materials have a very sensual appeal, and the exhibit as a whole a embraces the materiality of sculpture; we are encouraged to walk around it, to view it from different angles, to consider the effects of light on its organic form, to consider our presence in relation to it.


I was lucky enough that simultaneously, an exhibition of new work by Mike Kelley, in collaboration with Michael Smith was being shown in the floor above. Their 'A Voyage of Growth and Discovery' shows a 'pre-lingual man-child', a character developed by Smith named IKKI, attending the Burning Man festival in the Nevada Desert. Shown through a combination of video projections and installations referencing childhood, such as blankets, toys and climbing frames, left. Having previously looked at Kelley's work on childhood and his approach to craft, I found this exhibition an interesting culmination of his ideas, and, similar to Black, shows the effectiveness of playing upon the connotations of certain materials and objects.

Carol Ann Duffy

I was lucky enough to see possibly my favourite poet, Carol Ann Duffy, give a reading of her latest works from a new collection, 'The Bees'; her poetry is hugely influential to me and my practice, with poems such as 'Before You Were Mine' providing strong inspiration for some of my early works. Memory is a strong essence within her new works, with pieces such as 'Premonitions’ seeing the poet imagining the death of her mother as their ‘first’ meeting, with time moving backwards through memories of the time they shared together. However, I felt a particular resonance with her piece 'Water', in which three generations revolve around one image of a cup of water, with thirst linking the poet to both her grandmother and daughter. These ideas of female genealogy are recurrent themes within my own work, and I found it a fascinating concept to consider family history continuing through objects.

Water, Carol Ann Duffy

Your last word was water,

which I poured in a hospice plastic cup, held

to your lips – your small sip, half‑smile, sigh –

then, in the chair beside you,

fell asleep.

Fell asleep for three lost hours,

only to waken, thirsty, hear then see

a magpie warn in a bush outside –

dawn so soon – and swallow from your still-full cup.

Water. The times I'd call as a child

for a drink, till you'd come, sit on the edge

of the bed in the dark, holding my hand,

just as we held hands now and you died.

A good last word.

Nights since I've cried, but gone

to my own child's side with a drink, watched

her gulp it down then sleep. Water.

What a mother brings

through darkness still

to her parched daughter.

Carol Ann Duffy's 'The Bees' is available now from Picador Publishing.

Untitled works, (2011) embroidered photographs

A selection of recent works. I see a lot of Maurizio Anzeri's work in these pieces, whose exhibition at the Baltic I was lucky enough to see earlier this year. I was particularly interested in his ideas regarding photographs; in an interview for Yatzer, Anzeri claimed:

"When we all look at a photograph, we somehow believe that we look at the truth or at some kind of reality but we know that it’s not, It’s just a moment... We all still look at it as if it’s real. It’s trapped in there and it’s like you managed to cast some kind of magic spell on that piece of paper to entrap some kind of reality to use and reuse every time you look at it".

For me the reverse of these pieces was the most interesting aspect - they have allowed me to explore how to visually represent and highlight the process of embroidery, and also the sense of mystery and frustration which I believe is similar to that of recalling memories; the shapes hint at something on the other side which we can't see, something out of our reach...

Also, check here for some amazing 'Stitched Art'!

Long Live Painting

In an age when we are saturated with images from the mass media, the retrospectives of Gerhard Richter and Wilhelm Sasnal, held at the Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery respectively, present works which explore the nature of seeing and the way in which we experience the world through looking. Taking photographs, and often images from popular culture, these artists reinvent the image through their choice of media, emphasising materiality of paint and its ability to depict images in an entirely different way to a photograph, as seen in Sasnal's 2007 'Roy Orbison 1', left.

The inclusion of family members in the works was a particular inspiration for my current works, referencing collected family photographs. Sasnal's faded or blank faces in his paintings of family photographs draw us in and add an element of mystery and even frustration; our desire to uncover who these people are allow us as an audience to engage with the works on a level which we may not be able to were they simply family portraits. Richter's photorealist works, such as Betty (1977) For me, Richter simply presents use with surely this image could be achieved through photography? He seems here to almost contradict

Richter's work claims to question the nature of painting as a practice; he ask 'what are the capacities and limits of painting? What is its relationship to photography, and how can we think about its material status' (Dr Mark Godfrey, curator). Nonetheless, I feel certain areas of his work forget this aim - his photo-realist pieces, such as 'Betty' (1977), seemed to simply affirm his skill at painting. I was far more intrigued by his less obvious, ambiguous pieces, in which the application of the paint gave the image a whole new life. In his 'Notes 1990', Richter romanticises the act of painting, and rejects modernisms notions of paintings as flat objects - parts of reality which can now seemingly never be representational, and have thus lost their ability to be profound. Through painting from photographs, both Sasnal and Richter address these issues, creating paintings which can never be of reality. In both shows, I felt a strong sense of optimism - a hopefulness for painting and its impact upon society. Through application, thickness, mark making, these artists are able to hint, suggest, question what the image is conveying to us, and highlights the ability of the painter to transform what at first may seem a straightforward image into a powerful statement.

Untitled (2011) acylic and embroidered thread on appropriated textiles