Leah Davies
Week 10 Exhibition
'What Is Normal?', 67"x60",
Mixed media patchwork tapestry, December 2021
The week 10 exhibition allowed me to experiment with collaboration within the studio space, while also considering how the expanded tapestry would be effectively presented. Firstly, it was decided to expand the tapestry outwards now as I was happy with the length of the work and how it filled most of the wall but was also at a height for the audience to immediately engage with. Following on from the week 5 exhibition, the artwork was presented along the studio wall again but now was hung slightly off the wall along pole that went through the top of the piece- like a traditional tapestry. Giving the piece more form and structure as it was not stuck to the wall, it had it's own movement and it fell into its natural place.
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Following on, this exhibition enabled me to explore with working collaboratively. Even though not combining our works, Philippa Rocks and myself thought about how we could combine our similar themes and present our work in the studio in a way that would compliment each other. Philippa's geometric mirrors focused on the angular shapes of her brain injury clients and allowed the audience to be reflected in the shapes of those with disabilities, to gain an understanding on how those with disabilities view us as able-bodied people. My work, focusing on a reflection of mental health issues and the questions raised while dealing with these issues, was able to find a common ground with Philippa's. Both work centering around themes on the reflection on one's individual thoughts but also bringing to light concepts that people find difficult to understand. Both works provided space for the audience to think and open up conversations, that being about themselves or learning about these topics. We played around with how to place our artworks in the studio, side by side or swapped around and it was decided that this corner space created a small safe space in the studio. The beautiful and effective thing about this collaboration is that the tapestry is reflected in the mirrors, joining both pieces together. The photo above shows people viewing our artworks during the exhibition, a great evidence on how people used the space to reflect and look into these artworks with great detail, which is all that we set out to achieve.