And the Door Opened 2019 - to date
‘And the Door Opened,’ is a collection of pots, made in partnership with women@thewell, (w@tw,) a women-only service, based in Kings Cross, that provides support to women in prostitution and also those at risk. The pots illustrate the lives of the women they work with, based on accounts provided by the women themselves. w@tw also provides support to women wishing to exit the sex trade and helps them to overcome the barriers they encounter. The pots in this group represent accounts of both exited survivors and those still involved in prostitution.
Street Exit, 2019
‘Street Exit,’ represents an account from a street homeless young woman being pimped by a man she thought of as a ‘boyfriend,’ in return for a place to sleep. The pot shows a woman begging on the tube, sleeping in the station and on a bus and, finally, in a hostel sitting at table with a cup of tea contemplating the difficult process ahead.
Will feature in my exhibition in Northleach at The Old Prison
I'm not the Criminal, 2019
In its unbroken state, this pot was called 'The Invisible Man,' a reference to the men who pay for sex. The shattered and rebuilt version depicts, inside the pot, the March Against the Sex Trade led by Fiona Broadfoot, a sex trade survivor and campaigner for the abolition of the sex trade.
I'm Not the Criminal, view 1, 2019
I'm Not the Criminal
I'm Not the Criminal, 2019, detail
I'm Not the Criminal
February Dark and Cold, 2020
w@tw first meet ‘Gemma,’ aged fifteen, being sold for sex on the London streets. At her request, they help her return to her family ‘in a Northern town,’ There is clearly sexual abuse and/or exploitation involved there so she returns to London, street homeless again. She contacts w@tw for second time, when released from prison. She now has numerous interlocking problems that threaten her future. This still very young woman’s survival and exit remains a work in progress.
February Dark and Cold, 2019, from And the Door Opened, my project with women@thewell
detail from February Dark and Cold
February, Dark and Cold, 2019, from the series, 'And the Door Opened.'
February, Dark and Cold, (2019)
Survivors and Fighters, 2021
Unbroken, this pot was called, ‘Ten Thousand Men,’ The outside of the pot depicts them as repulsive grotesques on the sex trade merry-go-round. The smashed version, rebuilt with gaps framed in gold, shows, on the inside, the women who survive and campaign for sex trade abolition and improved exiting support.
Fighters and Survivors, (2021) view 2
'Survivors and Fighters,' view 5, 2021
Survivors and Fighters, (2021), view 1
Women@theWell, 2019
‘women@thewell.’ shows a young woman who describes herself as 'destitute, dirty and down,’ until she met w@tw where she gets clean clothes, a hot meal and has a 'named worker.' Here she was treated as fully human, perhaps for the first time in her young adult life. The gaps are small in this pot, her past is shut away for now but still revisits her through the cracks causing flashbacks and repeat trauma.
women@thewell
women@thewell
