Throughout December the Phoenix Art Space Window Gallery is displaying our responses to haikus. Here is mine: a three-part installation made out of lampshades that represent transitions between seasons and transitions in women’s body. There are many other responses created by Phoenix-based artist in the exhibition which will continue till the 5th of January 2020.

This series started with Gerda Chandelier made for the Snow Q Project last year. This time , the upcycled lampshade was turned into a free-standing rather than suspended installation. It makes me think of reclining Mayan sculptures or work by Henry Moore. Or a decorative piece of furniture. Some parts are like a spine and veins, some like tattooed skin. Or a decorative upholstery. The bulging curvy form that looks like breast and pregnant belly bump and vulva, is made out of a bra and has strong visual links to fertility sculptures. The bottom part of the lampshade is cut into and tassels unfurl to look like ovaries. I wonder whether this particular piece was subconsciously produced as a result of risk reducing surgeries I had as a BRCA carrier.

I have been working with them for a while. Their flimsy little bodies and their ubiquity make them pathetic and vulnerable but also slightly predatorial. Some make me think of winter crows. Some of dead seagulls found on a beach. Some of plucked chickens ready for the Sunday Roast. Made with laddered tights and found, rejected materials: packaging, bags, bits found on a beach.

Please come to see my latest mixed media drawings and sculptures created in response to seasons, folktales and mythology. I will also exhibit textile sculpture produced for the Arts Council funded Snow Q project. The exhibition will be open every day and will finish on 23rd of June. Please click here to see a short feature in June’s edition of Artist of the Month.

Please come and join me at my studio (3S6) at the Phoenix Brighton. I will be showing my paintings, new mixed media drawings as well as textile sculpture produced for the Snow Q Project.

https://www.phoenixbrighton.org/events/open-studios-2019/