Exhibiting at Cambridge Girl Talk, Murray Edwards College

Me and my work

Artist statement

The Cambridge Girl Talk exhibition was very interesting.  Fewer exhibits than I expected, but interesting material. New works were shown in the bar area which had been designed with plenty of wall space for exhibiting.  (Murray Edwards looks like a brutalist piece of architecture, and building regs have obviously changed since, because one stairwell was incredibly narrow). Audience was largely girls from Murray Edwards but some from the wider academic community.  Quite a few boyfriends attended, and most of the audience looked seriously at the artwork before settling down to socialise and drink.

I had a very interesting conversation with a trans woman, interested in portrait photography in general, and expression in particular.

Pink Squire-Lindsay

 Pink made some very interesting remarks about this artwork.  She made the images in a university Life Class.  They are not pornographic.  She displayed them on the wall in her room.  Then received a phone call from the accommodation manager, followed by a letter instructing her to remove them. While she had infringed the rules about sticking stuff to walls, the work is not pornographic.  If the rules say no stuff on walls, I'd be interested to see whether the rules are applied consistently throughout the college.  If cleaners go into their rooms, then workplace legislation applies, and there is European legislation about no pin-ups in the workplace.  But these are life class poses, so calling it porn is inapt.  This was my best-in-show piece, for its narrative.

Kate Towsey.  Playing with the feminine and the abject