Vanessa Marr in Partnership with the British Craft Council - Women and Domesticity – What’s your Perspective?

Description

Delivered as part of the The British Craft Council at 50 celebrations: Join project founder, artist, and academic, Vanessa Marr for an inspiring journey into her ongoing ‘Women and Domesticity – What’s your Perspective?’ collaborative craft project. Vanessa will reveal the inspiration for project and the stories behind a selection of the hundreds of hand-embroidered dusters that have contributed by women from across the world to challenge the legacy of so-called women’s work.

Dusters were selected for embroidery and display as a metaphor for domesticity because they are mundane (like most domestic tasks), yet visually appealing in their brilliant bright yellow. This practice asks how hidden and silenced female domestic experiences can be voiced through collective craft practice, and explores how the duster, which signifies domesticity through our innate knowledge of its purpose as a cleaning cloth, can act as a catalyst for change through collaborative and collective making. Vanessa regSave
ularly promotes this work through exhibition in arts venues, community workshops, and academic publication.

The talk will conclude with workshop style prompts and a call to contribute your own duster to the ever-growing collection.

Description of organisation
The ‘Women & Domesticity – What’s your Perspective?’ collaborative arts project, run by artist and academic Vanessa Marr since 2014, explores contemporary perspectives on the everyday lives of women. Through an open call, participants are invited to embroider their domestic thoughts, feelings, complaints, and celebrations as words or images onto a yellow duster. Each duster is unique and hand-stitched, transforming it from cleaning cloth to craftivist act. The ever-growing collection includes hundreds of dusters that have been exhibited and presented widely in community, creative and academic contexts across the UK, mainland Europe, and Florida, USA.

Period	29 Sept 2023
Degree of Recognition	National