Liminal Woman Triptych: Sadie, Annie & Maude

From the Liminal Woman Triptych

Details from Maude (left) and Sadie (right)

Whilst I actually first made the prints whilst I was at the RCA, showing them, selling them, and continuing to work with them has happened in the years since. Whilst each piece stands alone as a finished piece in and of itself is in small very limited editions of 3 or 4. I plan to work much more detail into 1 of each creating permanent fixed layered individual high value pieces of original work

This body of work was about the refugee experience of my ancestry, and at the same time the imagined, psychological separation and individuation process of the women of my maternal lineage. I am 4th generation British. ‘But my bones remember the helm’. My great grandparents generation would refer to their countries of origin, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania as the Helm, as in home. There is a romanticism in my view of History in these works which I think is a Jewish survival technique. I intend to gently, lovingly, kindly, but rigorously examine that

I am available if you would like to commission me to make new work with you on reimagining your own ancestry, or with your old diaries to save them as beautiful pieces of artwork

  • This is a gallery of fragmented starting points, some sketches for further development, some textured details, some finished pieces

  • You can click on any of the thumbnails below to view fragments and details of my work. You can hover over the expanded image for more information.

  • In my working method I tend to start with lots of scattered ideas and points of interest, and then realise they are actually cohesive explorations of ideas once I have drawn them together, and fine tune and hone in on my core subjects of interest. Ideas touched upon here some for further exploration include, memory, somatic healing, revealing and hiding, nostalgia, communication, history, political conflict, propaganda, the individual and subjective experience of intergenerational, ethnic, cultural and vicarious trauma, otherness and outsiderness

  • I plan to make a big a series of artists books to explore these ideas. I look forward to further developing my artistic skills, including but not exclusively a practical study of photogravure, cyanotype, collage, etching, photo lithography, silkscreen, bookbinding, calligraphy, and more

  • I’ve developed to date a very personally coded visual and artistic language over time using found imagery, drawing, waxing, sewing, burning, etching, tracing, print, digital print, collage, photo-media, and tactile layering and I want to broaden this vocabulary.

  • I work with textures and little details, a subtle, faded, neutral palette. I have delighted in torn and burned edges, layers of differently textured papers, thickened and aged with wax. I play with language and text, I'm exploring asemic writing, I use stitches to echo and evoke sutures, healing and mending, handwriting and type, translation and mistranslation, I am fascinated by history and how it influences and echoes in today. This language won't be lost as I develope more skills but enhanced

  • A broader and overarching theme of my work explores how history and politics impact and influence the identity and subjectivity of a person, groups of people, ethnicities and cultures today

  • My own complex 'outsider' identity means I have a vast internal landscape with which to observe how history and politics impact on my own body and mind, and thus enable me to explore these themes both academically and subjectively

  • I think these fragments evoke a nostalgic expression of history, which leaves it in the past. In this new project I want to contrast/juxtapose this romantic aesthetic (without loosing it) with a grittier more colourful, contemporary, brash and literal aesthetic to explore the more shadowy, harsh impact of time in today.

I have shown The Liminal Woman Triptych installation over the years in 5 different gallery spaces including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark and at Camden Arts Centre, London. The images below shows the installation in different gallery settings. You can click on individual images to view in more detail

‘Maude’ published in Alan Smith’s book ‘Etching: a guide to traditional techniques’

 

Sadie

Sadie: Photo litho on Japanese paper, waxed, folded and sewn

This was my grandmothers wedding photograph circa 1943 whilst my grandad was on leave from the army. Her name was Sadie

As we move through time we also move through space as the 3 women start with their back to the viewer and then turn to face the viewer

Annie

Annie: giclee print on Japanese paper, waxed and sewn.

This image was taken from a small detail of a photograph displayed at the maritime museum in Liverpool. It was a picture of a crowd on deck and a woman dancing in the middle. My great Grandma Annie amidst other ancestors, travelled by boat from The Ukraine to Liverpool in the early 1900’s escaping politically sanctioned violent antisemitic pogroms. I imagined this woman to be her.

Maude

Maude: Photo etching on Japanese paper waxed and sewn with red cotton.

This was taken from a picture of Maude Allen an ‘exotic’ dancer during the first world war