Unravelling the Manor House, Preston Manor, Brighton

I created a site-specific installation along with 11 other artists, commissioned by contemporary craft group Unravelled. The artwork was made for a temporary exhibition in Preston Manor in Brighton, a country manor house dating from c.1600. The house and its contents gave a rare insight into life during the early years of the 20th century.

Inspired by the animations of Lotte Reiniger, I cut out silhouette paper maquettes with joints (connected by flattened wire). I loved researching the lives of imagined Edwardian servants - the sort of jobs they would have had to do… swans carved…pheasants plucked… jellies carried… floors swept…. Once I had some repetitive tasks to capture, I created simple stop-motion animations and then rear-projected these onto a dressing screen that I had covered with hand screenprinted panels.

The result was an illuminated moving pattern. An insight into the imagined lives of some of the Edwardian staff.

2010