Self Perception — Fibre — Image

To search for self - a 20th century syndrome? "No one can begin to think, feel or act now except from the starting point of his or her own alienation". (R. D. Laing)

An investigation into the body, its confines and contexts. Fragments of self become whole as universal metaphor. The making of art - introspection, therapy, process - becomes an act of growth and harmony. The self portrait becomes portrayal of womanhood. She is re-framed; the allusion to frame is not simply a device for demarcation but 'a context' - a domestic architrave, a 'frame' of mind and experience.

"One enters the other world by breaking a shell: or through a door: through a partition: the curtains part or rise: a veil is lifted" (R.D. Laing)

"One takes an individual path and reaches a universal concept .... " (M. Foucault)

An investigation into the meaning of materials and cultural association. Cloth - soft, vulnerable, women's work. Heather Dorrough - embroiderer, draughtswoman, designer, woman. To subvert the stitch, express the charcoal line, project the creative image. To transcend virtuosity and the constraints of tradition. To make art.

"It is the nature of the material of art to express the nature of material at the same time that it transcends the material. At that moment of rightness there is transfiguration, an exchange in presence, between maker and material. The object itself becomes the artist. The source of energy - seen, touched, heard - transforming its world in the language of its materials, which provides thereness, the place, the terrain, the geography of the metaphor". (Rose Slivka) 

The figure and cloth are recurred motifs, an interface and integral image. The material imparts an ancient quality, fossil-like, frozen fragments of humanity and architecture, Pompeii-like, patinas of age and weathering belie the temporal character of material substance.

Heather's works continue to deal with private and public myth and memory. But the intense investigations into private phobias which dominated the wonderfully lyrical Self Portrait series of 1982 have grown in statue. The tensions and harmonies captured in her new work import a Promethean quality to the figures and their environs - contained, trapped, chained to the rock and earth, but also breaking free. They have mythical proportions.

The works in this exhibition have great maturity, power and beauty. They speak for all women, all humanity. They speak of growth and decay, secrecy and revelation, a spirit of hope and liberation.

Dr. Peter Emmett.
February, 1985.