Pinion Maid
Porcelain, textile (2014)
Aiming to explore the constraints surrounding the female form, Pinion Maid asks to what extent these constraints are imposed from external sources.
Reflecting the cyclic handing-down of restriction and its manifestation on the body, the work draws from late Victoriana and early Edwardiana as an archetypal time of female restraint and rebellion.
The laborious construction of the work and the placement of the piece on the artist acknowledges constraint as belonging simultaneously to the realms of inheritance and masochism; the viewer is prompted to question what proportion they attribute both factors and to assess the driving forces behind each one.
