I've decided to work on paper for a site specific project about a real Victorian man called Joe Back.
He was the Odd Man, nowadays called an odd job man, who was employed at Preston Manor during Victorian & Edwardian times in Brighton.
He was rarely allowed above the servants areas below stairs but gradually gained status within the Manor's staff to become Estate manager. In this work he dreams of adventure and personal satisfaction and of forbidden love.
The works on paper (some of which are illustrated here) are evidenced by illustrated stories of expeditions of the time - which Joe was able to sneak view when left alone upstairs.
Joe was unable to read and as such the dreams of longing and sexual fullfilment are spaced over jumbled continents.
I hope to print these images and hand embroider small details in high colour on them. They may take the form of handkerchiefs, which have the sweated dreams on them, that will have been dropped when he went out to do his work again. We'll see.
I choose to work in collage to utilise the many wrecked books I've found in the second hand bookshops in Brighton.
I choose to work in collage to utilise the many wrecked books I've found in the second hand bookshops in Brighton.
These I am hoping are works about longing and his quiet loyalty and the firmly rooted class structure of the time in which he lived.
2 comments:
Clicked on to 'Embroidery Story' and was somewhat startled. You are a man of surprises! Gone to ground and then reappear with an array of new work. Purposeful, cohesive, researched - I do admire your focus. And your 'rescue' of Joe Back is so touching. The source illustrations fabulous.
Thank you Lesley, the collages have been good for me to do & it is such a relief to be doing some research based work again. I'm now working on a real unfinished sampler of the period with Joe Back, who I've decide was an "invert" as the Victorians termed homosexuals. He will be older & in boxer's garb with his dreamt travels as tattoos on his body. Also working with the ceramacist Matt Smith on a giant thimble!
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