Waspies
Recycled polythene bag, metallic threads, embroidery

Wasps gave their name to ‘waspies’ the corsets that Victorian women wore to give them tiny waists. As a young woman I spent time in Sudan listening to women’s FGM stories. I saw at close hand the diverse sufferings of women and became interested in the female experience of sexism, violence and abuse as girls grow up in different cultures, and in the subsequent effect of it on their lives. 
I also draw on personal experience as a girl and a woman, as the adoptive parent of an abused daughter and of my mother’s ‘schizophrenia’. 

Events happened.  Others should have happened, or happened only in the imagination.  Lies were told.  Children were born, or not born; adopted away from their families; ran away; were drugged, lost.  Sweet little girls raged. Mothers were raped, imagined crawling insects, died of knife wounds.  Minds were fragmented, bones shattered, blood shed.
And many many girls were mutilated.
 

I want to express the complexity, the fear of violence, the anxiety and the frequent confusion, even the underlying joy, experienced in growing up as a girl and as a young woman.

Artist BIO
2004, Croydon College: BTEC Art Foundation course
2009, University of the Arts, London, Central Saint Martins, College BA Fine Art

Exhibitions
December 2014 Christmas Show Putney Arts Theatre
October 2014 Wandsworth Artists Open House
April 2014 Material Matters Espacio Gallery
February 2014 Faites vos Jeux Espacio Gallery
October 2013 Wandsworth Artists Open House (solo)
August 2013 Summer Salon Islington Arts Factory
February 2013 A Fine Line Lumen Gallery
January 2013 Fragments Espacio Gallery
July 2012 Move Sprout Arts
May/June 2012 100 Artists 100 Metres Espacio Gallery
Jan/Feb 2012 Survive Aritsts Connect Occupancy of Islington Arts Factory
June 2011 Birthmarks Sprout Arts
June 2010 Dislocation Sprout Arts
June 2009 Degree Show Central Saint Martins
May 2008 Uncommmon Ground Islington Arts Factory