Don't Look at My Jugs....
and other stories
Our artefacts become our stories; episodes of human life, recorded and preserved. They travel through time and they speak in the future. ‘Don’t Look at My Jugs…and Other Stories’, which showed at The Burton, North Devon in 2023, was a reimagined museum collection of historical artefacts, each telling it’s own story – each an episode of everyday lived experience for women today. Ready for analysis, ripe for understanding and raring to speak, these artefacts ask us to consider now, whether modern society really is as progressive or as civilised as many would have us believe - Or is it up to historians of the future to hear the voice of 21st century woman?
Corn Dolly
Don't Look at my Jugs
Here there be Monsters
Curves and Cups
Fun Bags
The Inventory of Man Stuff (Small and Perfectly Formed)
Stoneware jugs with sgraffito decoration (2023)
Inspired by those on display at The Burton, this collection of six harvest jugs embodies a physical and obvious play on words. Designed to appear as just a bit of fun on the surface, they ask us to consider what the joke really is. Women’s bodies are often assumed by default, to be public property; open to commentary, scrutiny, judgement and ridicule. Like the doodled symbols and poetic texts of traditional harvest jugs, these reimagined versions suggest a collective social subconscious and much like a jug full of booze - it isn’t entirely wholesome.
Broken Woman (A five step programme)
Stoneware tiles with sgraffito and breakage (2023)
UNTAMED, OWNED, ERODED, ASSUAGED, REWILDED
The five stages of breaking and moulding women are determined by the various names society has attributed to them. It’s a flawed model, a perfect powder keg. Society still hasn’t learned how to maintain it, to manage that final unstable and incendiary product. There’s a reason ‘hags’ were once burned as witches….if they come out of this journey alive, they come out healed, strengthened, uninhibited and inflamed. They will no longer bend and break to your will.
Stoneware Incantation bowls with mishima decoration (2022)
Just Open a Window.
Tell Me Again.
Pretty Plead.
These pleas have been made to trap the devils of the patriarchy. They describe the underplayed physical, social, professional and domestic injustices that 21st century women experience daily. ‘Just Open a Window’ highlights some of the 60 identified physical and mental symptoms that woman of menopausal age go through, where ‘Tell me Again’ draws attention to the lived experience of toxic attitudes towards females of all ages and backgrounds. ‘A Pretty Plead’ recognises the burden of domestic anxiety that is mostly carried by women. Given their function to trap demons, this last bowl in two parts has potentially sinister implications.
Spong Woman
Underglazed Stoneware figurine on urn lid (2022)
Unlike Spong Man, Spong Woman hasn't got the time, or the luxury of sitting around silently despairing, avoiding the jobs that need to be done. She too despairs but she also wants the floor fixed and just wishes Spong Man would get off his backside. And now it looks like her drill bit has broken.
Revelations of Divine Cheese Scone
Stoneware vase, with inscribed and handpainted decoration and 24ct gold detail. (2022)
‘"I am sat here, in this quaint country tea shop /garden centre, eating a massive cheese scone, drinking tea by myself. I have no data on my phone and I'm not really sure how to occupy this time, there's literally nothing to settle my eyes upon purposefully. How did it get to this? How did I do cafes before smartphones? I remember now, there would have been magazines or a notebook. I just have a note taking app on my phone I'll have to make use of. I'm not enjoying the app tapping at all but at least I'm not staring at a wall feeling like a massive weirdo amongst chatty, middle class, perfectly behaved families who've got it all together. Maybe I'll make something with this outpouring babble. These digital notes may become a fine pot. And should these notes tapped out on this app, just to stop me feeling like a weirdo in a tea shop, become the stuff of art, then trust that these notes and this pot are of future historical importance. A rare tangible record of what 21st century people did in day to day life - what made them tick (data, cheese scones) and what made them feel awkward (being publicly alone with no discernible purpose). Will they notice and value my spelling error? The British Museum will snap this kind of thing up in a jiffy in say, 1000 years. An artefact, which precisely marks this transitional point into the virtual revolution - when humanity still clung helplessly onto its analogue tea shop experience. Stoneware coil pot, inscribed with the revelations of divine cheese scone, made by some woman in a tea shop. Circa 2022 AD/CE"
Queen Jane of Faceburgh
Stoneware vase, with mishima and hand-painted decoration and 24ct gold detail. (2022)
This vase pays homage to the voice of a woman who left her facebook profile open (found after randomly searching common names). All of her facebook posts were scribed in reverse order from most recent backwards, until I ran out of space. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I shared her pleas for charitable donations, family birthday wishes, her excitement for upcoming nuptials and her worries about the rising cost of living, but scribing her grief after losing a beloved family member also felt uncomfortably intrusive.
I don’t know if she knows her profile is public or not, but I did have to remind myself that her words, legally speaking, are there to be seen and potentially used, by all. Maybe, by some quirk of fate she will see this and recognise herself. If so I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing her voice and crowning her Queen of Faceburgh. All hail Queen Jane!
Between The Screens
Stoneware tiles, with mishima and hand-painted decoration (2022)
Back when I did full-on mother work on top of my full-on day job, I remember one day waking up with the feeling that I had somehow lost myself. At some unidentified point I had simply become my day job and his mum. I wasn’t me anymore. Time doesn’t allow for working mothers to be anything other than what they do: Full time, two jobber, fulfillers-of-duties-for-others. Now that I have come out of the other side, I still see it in working mothers everywhere and I wonder if they too wake up with that same sense of identity-loss.
Future societies depend upon successful parenting more than anything else - a heavy burden that is still mostly shouldered by women; working women who are undervalued, unrecognised and unrecognisable. But the woman those mothers really are is still there, somewhere between the alarm clocks, the school runs, the meetings, the emails, the routines and the box sets. Somewhere there, in between those screens.
Let her out!
Menses (The Period God)
Stoneware figurine with 24ct gold (2022)
At a friends house recently, I received the dreaded fitness tracker alert ‘1 day to go’. A smart countdown to an unwelcome monthly visitor. “and I hope the period gods are kind” replied my friend in earnest jest.
A ‘kind period god’ is an oxymoron. If she were a thing, she would have to be the most sadistic of all girls’ PE teachers. She would look like a cross between Miss Trunchbull and Megatron.
So here she is, in 24 carat gold lustre: ‘Menses the Period God’. Maybe by invoking her spirit, she will look down upon me with kindness this time.
Mothers Purse
Stoneware coins with inscribed, glazed decoration
This collection of ceramic coins or tokens is a representation of the strict budgeting measures imposed on families today, a responsibility mostly taken on by women. Massive costs of housing, energy, communications, travel, health and food leave only a few small, sad coins for the most basic of treats and fun times.
Our Mother
Stoneware fountain with mishima and hand-painted decoration. (2023)
‘Our Mother’ is both Mother Nature and all mothers.
Onlookers might notice first the act of breastfeeding. An act of nature which often raises eyebrows, discussion and affection simultaneously. Mother nature nurtures all, she’s a feeder, a grower and a bringer of life but are we missing the part of the narrative where she is also the most awesome scientist of all time? Controlling the balance of the natural world, the tides, the storms, the movement of Earth and moon, gravity and inevitably the universe.
How often do we read professional women’s accolades listed as, for example, ‘full time mother… and an athlete’ and how rarely do we see those descriptors for professional men who are fathers? Society likes to remind women specifically what they are here for and keep them in that box. But hidden away on the back of ‘Our Mother’, beneath her operational parts, lies the statement ‘My other job is at N.A.S.A’ – like a forgotten tramp stamp tattoo from the 90’s.
This jug installation piece reimagines not one particular artefact or period of history, but she is both timeless and of all time. She References Venus de Milo (100BC), The Mannekin-Pis (15thC), Harvest Jugs and Puzzle jugs (18thC), Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), the visible workings of HR Giger (20thC) and the opening line of the Lords Prayer (1st centuryish).
