Childhood memories

Sweet Shoes

Another country

screen-printed cotton 500x100cm

This title is an adaptation of a quote from L. P. Hartley, who famously opened his 1953 book The Go-Between with “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. In this work I am referencing my own personal past as a child.

Oranges and lemons

silk-screened fabric, metal, plastic, motor 100x100cm and original recording of the English song “Oranges and Lemons”

‘Oranges and Lemons’ is a traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game which refers to the bells of several churches, all within or close to the City of London. Here the disc bearing images of this old-time birthday game rotates, while the song is heard.

Childhood revisited

mixed media 100x35x15cm

This is based on clothes and shoes I wore as a child, here recreated in impossible, dream-like materials.

Childhood remembered

mixed media 100x56x15cm

Another in my series of clothes in unusual, unwearable, dream-like materials based on those I wore as a child.

Childhood imagined

foam, latex, sweets, rubber, plastic 98x75x15cm

A work made out of non-wearable materials, based on clothes in photographs of myself as a child.

Washing up text

The text here was taken from an old school book, explaining, in great detail, how to wash up!

Monster

wool and felt on canvas 195x84cm

Janus figure

mixed media 29x54x38cm

Housewives and heroines

stiffened lace 80x100x10cm

Made from lace of three different colors, I have fashioned the delicate fabric

into a series of translucent masks, all based on the face of my daughter. Through the repetition, I am suggesting that we each embody multi-faceted personalities and that every day we begin anew. There are cultural associations to the colors:
White designates purity, weddings, shrouds; Red is associated with sex, danger, blood; and Black can signify maturity, religious extremism or death. I like the idea that the Heroine and the Housewife are one and the same person.

More…

Harvest goddess

Mixed media 50x40x30cm + 110cm stand