Articles and features about Vanessa’s art, collaborations, research and study.
For full PURE Research Profile please visit: https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/vanessa-marr
RECENT PRESS & COLLABORATIONS
May – August 2021: Funded collaborative research project “The Domestic Academics: Finding time to write and care.’ An interactive quilt exploring the challenges faced by women academics with caring responsibilities when completing research during lockdown. Due to go live in September 2021.
March 2021: Feature in Embroidery Magazine ‘Women’s Work’.
January 2021: Feature in Stitch Magazine ‘A Fresh Start’
September 2020: A letter to my duster featured on ‘Dear Textiles’, a project by Betsey Greer, author and coiner of the term Craftivism.
http://www.deartextiles.com/vanessa-marr-bexhill-on-sea-east-sussex-uk/
August 2020: Interview with Textile Artist https://www.textileartist.org/vanessa-marr-the-mighty-duster
June/August 2020: Mothers Who Make Lockdown Photoshoot https://motherswhomake.org/facetimeportraits
June 2020: Work featured in Portraits episode on Greyson Perry’s C4 Lockdown Art Club
https://www.brighton.ac.uk/news/2020/the-domestic-academic
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/graysons-art-club
RECENT PUBLICATIONS & CONFERENCE PAPERS:
December 2020: Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations, edited by Nicola Darwood and Alexis Weedon. Chapter 11: Cinderella: The Ultimate Domestic Narrative.
July 2020: Maternal Art Magazine blog feature: https://maternalart.com/blog/embroidering-domesticity-onto-a-dusternbspby-vanessa-marr
January 2020: Speaker at Doing Autoethnography Conference, Tampa, Florida, US. Enticing and Enacting Visual Domestic Narratives by Drawing With Thread Upon a Duster: An Autoethnographic Study
January 2020: Chapter in collaboration with Jessica Moriarty: Reclaiming the Book of Spells: Storying the Self as a form of Resistance. Published by Routledge in Autoethnographies from the Neoliberal Academy: Rewilding, Writing and Resistance in Higher Education ISBM (print) 9780815371120 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Autoethnographies-Neoliberal-Academy-Jess-Moriarty
November 2019: TRACEY DRAWING JOURNAL
Drawing With Thread Upon a Duster: A Phenomenological Investigation of Female Domestic Experience
https://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/TRACEY/article/view/2544
ACADEMIC STUDY:
2019-24: PhD: Enticing and enacting visual domestic narratives by drawing with thread upon a duster: An autoethnographic study.
My area of study sits within creative arts practice-based research, underpinned by theories of drawing, narrative, autoethnography and the study of objects. In this work, I am investigating my own specifically female autoethnographic domestic biography, which will be physically voiced through the embellishment of stitch upon a duster. Fundamental to this investigation is the prolonged and contemplative engagement with the duster by piercing and stitching into it with a needle and thread.
2012-14: MA Sequential Design & Illustration: Promises and Expectations
A collection of poetry and embroidery exploring the domestic and feminine origins of fairy tales.
From September 2012 -14 Vanessa studied an MA in Sequential Design & Illustration with the University of Brighton, ultimately receiving a distinction award. The work she produced on this course, and the terrific support from her tutors George Hardie, Margaret Huber, Graham Rawle and Karen Morgan had a huge impact upon her personal practice. It developed from purely industry-focused graphic design, into a more imaginative practice that in turn feeds her professional work but also excites and fulfils her creatively and academically.
Fairy tales were originally told by women within a domestic context, they developed these narratives to make sense of the world around them. Through poetry she has imagined the personal motives for these stories, exploring the unacknowledged characteristics of principal female fairy tale characters. Through embroidery she is signifying the domestic expectations of women, both then and now.
Vanessa Marr 