Curated by Kim Thornton
Jocelyn Allen
Jocelyn Allen has been making self-portraiture projects since 2009, so it felt natural to photograph her motherhood journey. Her work allows her to process her thoughts and feelings, as well as document her life.
Rosie Barnes
Rosie is a documentary photographer and makes work (amongst other projects) about difference. Here, she is showing work from her portrait project – ‘No You’re Not – a portrait of autistic women’. This work has previously been selected for Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery and funded through Wellcome Collection.
Joan Byrne
I call this series Postcard Interventions: onto images of vintage art I introduce a jolt of modernity or absurdity. More broadly, I make collages, some of which incorporate text. In common with my history in street photography, the focus in my work remains on how precious/precarious life is on our shared blue dot.
Nicky Hirst
The Residents: By assembling and revealing the backs of the frames often used for family photographs, Nicky Hirst has created a series of alternative, abstracted and balanced portraits specifically for the mantelpiece in the Thomas Wright Room in Bell House.
Ellie Laycock
Ellie is an award-winning artist who explores ideas of power, control, politics and the passage of time. She is a Prix Pictet nominee and her work is held in public and private collections around the world.
Rosy Martin / Verity Welstead
Rosy Martin and Verity Welstead worked collaboratively to explore our feelings about ageing. We searched for beige or taupe clothes, that all too ubiquitous supposedly safe older women’s colour choice, and ‘made the worst of it’. Rosy’s mother’s woollen vest, in soft beige offered us a unifying image pairing, an honesty which we both embraced for Studies in beige.
Kim Thornton
Kim Thornton uses humour and rebellion to explore contemporary issues, the politics of being female and stereotypical roles and their value. She creates surprise narratives with costumes fashioned from domestic materials and photography.
Verity Welstead / Rosy Martin
Verity Welstead and Rosy Martin work collaboratively to explore feelings associated with the ‘every day’. This image was made two years on from Verity experiencing the raw grief of ‘empty nest syndrome’. She was surprised how her grief had dissipated to reveal something new.