Pen Women
Collage and Print images produced as part of Pen exhibition, Birmingham, May-June 2014
The particular interest here was in the role of women in the Birmingham Pen Trade. Back in its heyday, all the operatives at the presses were women, each making 18000 pens a day. Using photographic documentation from the museum, a series of collages were produced that explore the role of these working women - their stories, their labours, their unknown faces. Combining digital and analogue techniques, existing imagery was manipulated to question viewers' responses towards these anonymous figures as they fade in and out of the scene, leaving a visible trace of this often overlooked industrious workforce.
The particular interest here was in the role of women in the Birmingham Pen Trade. Back in its heyday, all the operatives at the presses were women, each making 18000 pens a day. Using photographic documentation from the museum, a series of collages were produced that explore the role of these working women - their stories, their labours, their unknown faces. Combining digital and analogue techniques, existing imagery was manipulated to question viewers' responses towards these anonymous figures as they fade in and out of the scene, leaving a visible trace of this often overlooked industrious workforce.