Director’s Blog – Lisa Charlotte Davis
This is hot of the press from our fab curator Alix Collingwood and designer Megan Watson, who has been working with artwork from our Who Wears the Trousers? zine and What’s All the Fuss About? newspaper, as chosen by Hild Bede students to encourage thinking about healthy relationships, with a particular emphasis on knowing and understanding ourselves as being the crucial basis for forming healthy relationships with others.
This panel draws together a series of collaged images that were produced back in 2022 as part of our Stepping Out of The Box project, from artist Pollyanna Turner working together with a group of students at Teesdale School and Sixth Form to explore notions of gender identity.
How much freedom do we really have to be ourselves when society tells us how we should look, behave and feel?
From the clothes we wear to the emotions we express, gender stereotypes can shape our expectations of ourselves and others. These collaged figures challenge familiar ideas of masculinity and femininity, inviting us to question the rules we learn about how we should look and who we should be.
What might change if we felt less pressure to fit the mould and felt more freedom to decide for ourselves who we want to be?
We’re so excited to breathe new life back into these artworks, spark conversation and reflection and invite a whole new wave of artistic expression on the subject of healthy relationships as the college launch an art prize in response to our exhibition.
If you could get your hands on these designs to display where you work/live/study, how would you want them? As postcards? A4 posters? A3? Tell us what you reck and we’ll get them up in our web shop!
