About
Selected Artworks
This was the second embroidery I made before I knew embroidery could be a thing, before I knew the Royal School of Needlework existed, before I knew of Instagram and before I knew of the plethora of YouTube technique videos.
I bought a pair of ceremonial kid leather gloves from the £1 table at an antiques shop in a town I used to live in. They reminded me of colonialism and the arrogance of the likes of Cecil John Rhodes who was depicted in 1892 in a Punch cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne standing over the African continent espousing his intention to connect Cape Town to Cairo. The cartoon is a visual pun based on the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the 7 Wonders of the World, hence the title, “Astride the African Continent Like a Colossus”.
I set upon a journey to unpick, unravel, and decolonise myself in the making of this piece.
I started stitching the word S-E-R-V-E instinctively i.e. before I’d embarked on my technical hand embroidery travels, and I got stuck when it came to ending the thread without making visible knots, so I left the needles hanging from the thread trusting that this way, the words would not unravel. I also wanted to imbue a sense of ‘unfinished business’ and impermanence to the piece, and now I love it.
This piece was exhibited at the Mannerheim Gallery, Paris in an exhibition curated by David Fryer called Substance, 2017.