Motive/Motif: Artists commemorate the Suffragettes

To mark the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act Charlotte Hodes and Alison Moloney conceived and co-curated an exhibition and invited twenty renowned and emerging artists to each create an image which was embroidered onto a handkerchief to mark women’s suffrage.

The starting point for this project was a handkerchief, embroidered in 1912 by Suffragettes who were imprisoned at Holloway Prison. Most of the sixty-eight women who embroidered their signatures onto the handkerchief participated in demonstrations in March 1912 organised by the Women’s Social & Political Union. They were denied the status of political prisoners and many were force-fed.

While men might have more commonly lived by their pen, the needle gave women agency in education (by learning to read and write whilst simultaneously learning their trade), employment and, where economically and materially possible, in their creativity and self-definition. The stitched word enabled women to find artistic and even radical expression and is a unifier of women from different class and cultural backgrounds.

The embroideries were stitched by Harriet Brown in the LCF embroidery workshop, with the support from technician, Yosana De Ceita Rodrigues Leal and the department.

Images in the attached files should not be reproduced without permission from the individual artists.

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