A Slow Creeping
This work responds in part to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1890). This gothic tale recounts the experience of a woman struggling with her mental health after being locked away in a attic room following the birth of her child. In the confines of the room she begins to unravel psychologically, becoming obsessed with the idea of another woman trapped and creeping within the layers of the paper. These ideas of ‘creeping’ and layers, and of a claustrophobic repetition in a suffocating domestic space resonated with the artist during the Covid pandemic, which is when this project started. During successive lockdowns, everyone had to adapt how they worked, lived, socialised and related to one another. This work went on to be a collaborative exhibition as part of the art duo Thomas & Maloney, which acted as both an exorcism and a celebration of their lockdown experiences.
Liquid Emulsion
Booklet
Frames
Searching second hand shops for old frames and paintings, Thomas then removed the glass from the frames and coated them in a light sensitive liquid emulsion. She would then print her own images onto the glass in the darkroom using her large format negatives. When Thomas reassembled the frames and paintings with her images printed onto the glass, a layering occurs which gives the final pieces a haunted and eerie effect. Dreaming of escaping to the landscapes within the paintings, instead the portraits are trapped in the glass and never quite reaching them.
