In Chipping Campden, UK
This exhibition will feature 3 new art works, a fresh insight in to the Accused project previously made. The work highlights that once accused of something as significant as FII, that it is impossible to walk away from it. Revisiting this work in a new style 7/8 years later, emphasises that no matter how much time moves on, the hurt is real. You want them to feel that pain too.
I have been exploring scale in the new work, as traditionally i go big, or go home, (or go live which is life-size, so big i guess too). I have gone small almost by accident, as a way to fulfil my creative instincts attempting to squeeze in art around everything else expected of me. I’m the kind of person who takes up space, and i am not ashamed to do so as a woman, so going small is contrary to my nature. I wonder what this says about me right now, and my urgency to create on whatever scale possible, just to have a voice again. I have gladly found my voice again.
I was compelled to go little, whilst looking through some vintage postcards that i connected with the family and the theme. A way to expand the time and place perhaps. It somehow, makes the accusations all the more devastating when i change the context from the 6′ posters that engulfed me, in to small postcard sizes that i can feel and hold in my hands, and look at time and time again. Tiny tactile pictures made of even tinier pieces of cut up text and images, collaged together, photographed and then dismantled. Like a jigsaw, nothing was glued, nothing was safe.
Nothing here is permanent, it is slightly unnerving for me that they only existed in that ephemeral state – i dislike losing things, so that these will never exist again in ‘real life’, adds an anxious edge to the work personally – it’s why i ended up printing the photos several times over – photos that were taken on my bed, with my mobile phone, in the diminishing light of the early autumn sun – hence the inconsistent tone, the shadows, spelling mistakes and badly cut edges – it is what it is, it was created, it is now gone. I will not re-do it. life is not perfect, neither am i, neither is the work.
