Corona

A project aimed at emerging photographic talent in the West Midlands. Six contemporary women artists/photographers were selected to produce new work on the basis of written proposals submitted to IRIS - The Women's Photography Project in December 1996. Over the following six months the women met regularly to discuss the directions that their individual projects were taking, and also the group project as a whole. IRIS provided financial and practical support as well as a mentorship scheme for the artists to generate further critical input. The work that was realised was exhibited under the title, 'In Spite of Appearances'

The Artists:

Jo Cound
"The landscape is my secure place, where I feel comfortable, familiar, where I have space. I have been returning to the landscapes I used to visit as a child. My images address my feelings towards the places I visit, and memories I have which connect me to them. I have been making layered images using colour to represent the present landscape and black and white to represent the past. Some of these include blurred, ghostly figures, to refer to my previous existence in the landscape in the past. Special thanks to Raych for all your time and energy."

Jane Fletcher
"When the scanty material is collected, it is harder still to fit together the incomplete jigsaw which is all that remains to us. (Author's note, Myths of the Norsemen)"

"This body of work is based on the remembered experiences of two women living in Norway as a consequence of marriage. Paradoxically, it also sets out to express the inability to articulate oneself fully in (a foreign) language. It combines resolved ideas, carefully constructed, with tentative reconstructions of that which continues to refuse resolution. I am indebted to Rona McDonald for her contribution of visual material and ideas, and to Mari Mahr whose productive criticism and general enthusiasm cannot be overstated. Thanks to the Photography Department at Staffordshire University for their help and the use of facilities. Og en god klemm til min mann og familien sin"

Lucy Kane
"My work focuses on the fragmented figure. It reflects the classical Greek sculpture on display in museums. The Greek icons have been dismembered and damaged over time and through the removal from their original setting are viewed in a very different context than originally intended. Simultaneously they relate to modern images of women where the figures are often fragmented and manipulated by the media. The body of work appears to have some sort of narrative going on, however, the whole picture is made incomprehensible as only fragments are displayed on the expanse of wall space."

Anna Maksymluk
"Tentative steps on the road to visually exploring erotic writing by women. The work is fragmentary, tiny bouts of memory, sidelong glances... The images are sensual yet claustrophobic. We are looking into a world that has been hidden and obscured until relatively recently."

Dawn Robertson.
"For many thirty-something women, the conflict between feeling a right to get what we want, materially and emotionally, and being trapped in a generation between suppressed ambition and assumption of equality, involves an immense strain, The repetition of women's daily domestic life in an era of socially defined roles has been replaced for many women by the routine evolved out of trying to establish themselves in the workplace, bringing up a family and negotiating their own space, This body of work attempts to highlight some of these emotions through personal history. The domestic objects are offered as evidence of the traditional tools of the home where a majority of women accept primary responsibility- wanted or not - for housework and childcare. The objects are familiar ones from my childhood and now exist in my own domestic environment where they are appreciated as much for their aesthetic qualities as their function."

Jane Smith
"With photography I can paint, montage, sculpt and construct. It provides an art medium waiting to be stretched and able to portray ideas, feelings and emotions for which there are no words."

"As someone who believes in Angels, but hasn't seen one yet, I feel they hover around us, fading in and out of focus while acting when needed as our guardians in life and death. Captured on camera in Herefordshire, London and Paris and released onto fabric to fly like washing in the wind, they watch over us."