Crafted Exhibition
I'll be exhibiting as part of CRAFTED , a biennial exhibition of contemporary craft, design and fine art at Kirkby Gallery from 30 October – 23 December
The Crafted exhibition will showcase metalwork, textiles, fashion, ceramics, illustration, collage, painting and book art from artists and makers including Becky Atherton, Kelly Broughton, Kate Bufton, Hollie Cooper, Julie Dodd, Harry Garner, Heston Isle Press, David Holmes, Sue McLaren, Ali Pickard, Catherine Rogers, Julie Taylor, Kate Tidmarsh, Hilary Marteau and the North West Book Art Group.
For 2023, the exhibition has been co-curated with Liverpool Book Art, celebrating the creative practice of book art through unique hand-made books, stories & illustrations, distinctive notebooks,
prints, book sculptures, bindings, and more!
Kirkby Gallery is located at the Kirkby Centre, Norwich Way, Kirkby L32 8XY
The Gallery is open Mon – Fr 10am – 5pm (last entry 4.30pm) and Saturdays 10am – 1pm (last entry 12.30pm)
Killed Photos
This piece has come about after reading about the ‘killed photos’ from a 1930’s American farm documentation project funded by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.
Photographers were sent out to document the life of poor and destitute farmers. Over 270,000 photos were taken, but approximately 100,000 of them were deemed unfit for use and were ‘killed’ -using the language of the project administrator- by hole punching them.
I decided to bring some of them back to life. Using the punched holes as a starting point, each photo box has 4 different images printed on wood with holes placed in different places. The images can by swapped. Behind the front image is a hand embroidered scroll on a vintage flour sack cloth. The embroidery has an agricultural theme including the different sounds that goats make around the world, old tool names, and images of ‘wallfish’ otherwise known as snails, possibly the first farmed animal. Each photo has a new life as the scroll is turned and parts of the embroidery behind can be seen through the images.
