Obscure Secure

Began with a series of conversations around process: with artist Mali Morris, psychoanalyst Valerie Sinason, including studio visits to explore each other’s practice and writing in response to questions set by ourselves. 

Ipswich Borough Council art collection held at Christchurch Mansion

Guided by Curator Emma Roodhouse, we visited the stores at Christchurch Mansion to see work made by women artists held in the collection. We narrowed our choice to twentieth century artists in order to create a cohesion to our selection and a connection with our own lives.

Once we had made a selection of the women artists we wanted to include in our exhibition we researched the material held in the museum’s archive files, including information of how the work was purchased, biographical details, letters, exhibition cards and contextual information created by the museum from past exhibitions.

Planning the Wolsey Art Gallery exhibition

To be able to see how the selected works looked on the wall with our own paintings we created a scaled down miniature exhibition using reproductions of the work on paper. When it came to the actual hang of the exhibition we recreated this plan on the floor before transferring it the wall.

During the project we collected publications that were relevant to the artists we had selected to create an accompanying library for the exhibition. These included exhibition catalogues, biographies, a book on women war artists and artists editions.