A huge fan of contemporary artist Grayson Perry, Vanessa, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media, submitted her work which was written for a chapter called ‘The Domestic Academic’ as part of a book on autoethnography due to be published later this year.
As part of her practice-based research, Vanessa has asked women to embroider their domestic perspectives on a duster since 2014 – a call she’s now repeating, with the focus switching to experiences during the coronavirus lockdown.
To create the self-portrait, Vanessa first drew the outline before tracing and overlaying the drawings on to the duster using a lightbox and fabric pen. The three faces represent the three different versions of herself: care-giver and nurturer for students and family, frustration at not having enough time or space to get things done and her more personal face – one which is overwhelmed by the others.
Appearing on the TV show came as a surprise: “I didn’t hear anything back so I assumed I’d been unsuccessful. The scheduled showing was postponed and I didn’t know when it would be shown – then I was actually in the bath when my phone suddenly got very busy with friends texting me to say they’d seen my work on TV!