Words About Women

Way back in 2022, as I was preparing the final version of Criminal Quilts exhibition for Llantarnam Grange, I devised a collaborative project to mark the end of over 10 years working with the stories of women in the criminal justice system in the 19th century. The idea was to create a collaborative artwork with stitched words reflecting on the negative or judgemental words used to describe women in the Victorian documents and some contrasting or positive words.

I ran some workshops during the exhibition on International Women’s Day and the gallery ran more with community groups during the exhibition run.

The words on dark cloth are the negative labels or words used in Victorian documents, or words chosen by contributors. Contributors chose words which had been used about themselves at some point or they had heard used negatively about women. The words on light backgrounds were intended to be a contrast, a challenge to the negative stereotypical words written on the dark backgrounds. The words are not all ones I would choose, and not all really fit the brief as I intended, but in the spirit of enabling women’s voices to be heard, I have not I have not directed, curated or selected the choice of words to include, except by giving a list of the words used in Victorian documents, such as Pilfering Tramp. I love the wide variety of different interpretations that the stitchers have made, particularly in the interpretation of the positive language – rather than descriptions, some have stitched affirmations and hopes.

Thank you to all of you who contributed your time and thoughts into making this piece of work so powerful and emotional. I’m sorry its taken so long to share and acknowledge your part in this.

This is what I shared at the time:

Would you like to stitch part of a collaborative artwork for my Criminal Quilts project? Throughout the years I’ve research women in Stafford Prison, I’ve noticed the words used to label women. The nature of the prison documents means the words are quite judgemental and absolute. 

With this project I want to reflect on the words used to describe and label women then and now. The artwork will be made of stitched words, both positive and negative, created by women participants through community workshops and women working on them at home. Being part of a collective project about women’s lives and the perception of women is really powerful. I’d love to hear your voice in this work.

I added the stitched words to the piece and it slowly grew in the gallery. I also invited women from my textile networks around the world to contribute a word or two as well. During 2022 I gathered these all together and created one single artwork from them – a long, double-sided ribbon of positive words on one side and negative words on the other. In the gallery it hung, draped on a hook and visitors could handle and read it, which really brought it to life. In the end I had over 50 contributions and the piece is over 5 metres long.

I had the following photos taken that summer with it spread out flat on a table. Although the photos are a great record of the words, this layout doesn’t have the kind of impact I wanted so I chose not to launch this piece until I’d worked out an alternative way of presenting it in a photo.

I spent the autumn thinking about how I really wanted to do this, pondering options like wrapping the ribbon around a prison building or in the Shire Hall at Stafford, where the project started, getting a number of women in Victorian clothing to hold it… all great ideas but wildly impractical. I was clear though that I wanted women in the photo – this is about women, not about buildings. I thought of a woman draped in the ribbon, over the top of Victorian clothes. Then I thought of without the clothes… an ‘unlabelled’ woman, who could be from 21st century or 19th century. The piece would return to being about women and their bodies. So I decided to have the piece photographed on my own body, which felt quite challenging on its own, and highly appropriate to the whole project. I had scheduled the shoot for February last year, thinking I could get the images out for International Women’s Day, but then I was too unwell to travel to the photographers at the time – with “women’s trouble”, which was highly appropriate but very inconvenient.

I rescheduled for August 2023 and braced myself for a potentially awkward session with my long-time photographer Paul Lapsley. Paul was totally unphased by me disappearing into the loo to wrap myself in textile and was really helpful in making me feel comfortable. There’s actually plenty of coverage from several metres of cloth and it was less revealing than I worried it might be. I intentionally wore no make up and put my hair up so I was not much different facially than Victorian women, although I am a lot better fed than many of them and have none of the smallpox scars or other injuries that many of them had.

We experimented with various poses taking the lead from the Victorian prison images where the women have their hands on their chests, although without the hands you can see more of the words. Most of them don’t have my face in either. I am not smiling or posing and felt quite vulnerable with naked shoulders and arms – I’ve not worn anything strapless for many decades, and I am not at all used to seeing myself like this.

But this work is not about me, the photos are not about me, but I am very much in them, pretty raw and natural, which has led to me feeling quite uncomfortable about sharing them. In some ways that is exactly how it should be. It would not have been right for this piece to be worn by a young, thin, pretty model and I am proud that I’ve done this myself using my own body, uncomfortable though I am about sharing the photos. That’s why it’s taken me another six months to be ready to share these, before I can see the work in the images not myself. And I wanted to share them on International Women’s Day too.

These two images are the ones I’ve chosen to print in the new series of A5 postcards which are available for pre-order now.

These are some of the others:

I really feel that these images do this project justice and I am so grateful for all the contributors for their part in this project and their patience while I got it right!