Troubled Children, Turner Contemporary.
OPEN EXHIBITION, 10th Anniversary, Turner Contemporary, Margate.
Wall Hanging : textile, paper and paint.
Techniques: printed fabric; knit; hand embroidery; drawing.
Size: (w) 200cm, (h) 240cm, (d) 15cm.
Troubled Children is about a group of nomadic women travelling from their cave, into the night, through forests to their boat, the women appear repeatedly, journeying across the textile work like a graphic novel. The disparate elements are bound together to give an apparent carelessness, but the nomadic women are shaped by their journeying and sense of place.
The textile hanging of fabric and painted paper, includes found objects and old clothing. The work is in a perpetual state of becoming, reverting from 2D to 3D forms, there is a child like naivety shifting back and forth between image and text, the viewer looks in vain for a line of letters and visual imagery that speaks out.
The work was inspired by a large piece of graffiti ‘Troubled Children’, that appeared overnight under the M20 motorway bridge in April 2020 at the beginning of Lockdown, in this space graffiti is constantly changing and felt like an outdoor exhibition during those early covid months. The graffiti ‘Troubled Children’ remains under the bridge and has not been painted over.