The domestic veil exhibition

 

I realise that with all the excitement of my exhibition and viva I haven’t actually found any time to blog about the exhibition so I’ve decided to remedy that by blogging about it this week. The exhibition was the final exhibition for my PhD work so it was an opportunity to show the whole body of work in one place and it was great to see it all together and in such an evocative venue. Thanks to all of you who visited the exhibition, I was so pleased by the numbers of visitors and all the lovely comments.

 

The basic idea behind my research considers the net curtain as a domestic veil and uses it as a metaphor for the home as a site of claustrophobia and confinement. Much of the work links to the gothic novels of nineteenth century writers, such as Anne and Charlotte Brontë, and reflects their ideas of women being trapped in the home as a result of social circumstances. The research also considers Freud’s concept of the uncanny, in which the homely shades into the unhomely.

 

My research and practice build on these ideas and the work reflects ideas about home as sanctuary and prison, shows how the net curtain can reveal the unquiet voice of the heroine, as well as the whispers of the home, in its role as silent witness, and finally how it becomes complicit in this dysfunctional domesticity. These four themes each have distinct practice linked to them so I’ll blog about each of them separately over the next couple of weeks.