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A major part of Chester’s practice engages with the maternal and the continual reconstruction of motherhood in response to the idealization of motherhood, and the changes in life, including (but not solely) the development of children as they grow up. Another aspect is the unrecognized mother’s labour and care as discussed in matricentric feminism. The unseen maternal practices are articulated within Chester’s work as present and pervasive with the raising which raising issues of motherhood and empowerment.
Maternal Selves
Static twenty-four-hour labouring, a contortion into an emergency caesarean – blood is lost. Sister and mother race to see the eldest with the new-born. Through a morphine blurring of edges and a spread on exfoliant sheets, a mother’s love wins out and in a thoughtless moment she says, ‘you look as though you’ve been run over by a bus’. A merging of interiority and exteriority without distinction of borders surfaces multiplicity.
Steel grating, bread dough
Lumpen is a sensation I experience within my body. Lumpen unearths notions of feminine subjectivity and multiple bodies – the fragmented body, maternal body, the ageing body, the menopausal the body – ultimately the transforming body. The insomnia body. My teenage children sleep deeply, what if I inhaled their sleep particles trapped within the pillows which would put me to sleep. Initially, the pillow stuffing formed the substance of Lumpen. The individual elements are manipulated through a multitude of touch.
tights, hollow fibre filling, acrylic paint, wire
Invisibility is a common realisation for ageing women. The experience of growing older is shaped by meanings ascribed to ageing which are articulated and visually represented within culture. Hence, the aging body is, in fact, culturally constructed by the spectator’s youthful gaze, resulting in ‘hypervisibility and invisibility’. So, the aging female body is perceived stereotypically and in general terms as impoverished through a lack of youth. The internalization of the external youth gaze merges with the deeply rooted male gaze.
Disappearing Act switches the ideas of invisibility for notions of disappearance, intimating a sense of agency. I try to envisage a sense of discarding - a shedding of an imposed existence for something transformative - new identities are explored within age and performativity.
tights, plaster, dried paint pigment
12 years into motherhood I started the menopause. Mother and daughter at the menstrual antithesis.
After some particularly hormonal explosions, Iris looks to me with a sharp glint and says, ‘We will both be lucky to get out of this alive’.
Rites of Passage explores ideas relating to feminine subjectivity and cunt imagery. It conflates two life stages; the beginning and end of menstruation. As a fresh young woman there was a sense of ‘moving up in the world’ from lacy - dingy white, once long ago - knee-high socks to tights – ‘natural all over American tan. A passing down of a mantle. I was physically and psychologically confined from waist to toe in the nylon encasing, which felt as smooth as sand on my pale, unmarked leg flesh.
tights, plaster, acrylic paint
On a socially distanced walk with a friend, I hadn’t seen for nine months, I came across dead, abandoned ivy trees. This find became the inspiration and the materiality to explore the experience of living through Covid 19.
The anthropomorphic qualities of the trees bring to life the suggestion of dancing with death.
Found ivy trees and bed sheets.
Response to Covid 19 - referencing bronchial trees and evoking anthropomorphic sensations
Acrylic, drawing materials on canvas, 100 x 150cm
I made the paintings in an improvisational way. I feel and think my way through the work and come across ideas, forms and space as they appear. In this series I have experimented with mixed media collage techniques combined with painting and drawing processes. This is an attempt to widen associations that can be suggested; for example particular fabrics and objects can initiate different ideas and meanings. The use of fabric and pins brings a more domestic feel to the work that references materials that are traditionally used by women either in the home.
I also worked with more figurative imagery. Forms that suggest familiar objects from things that surround us, as such enhancing forms and ideas that appear in the paintings in a type of 'free association'. These are glimpses of influences that filter into the imagination through things I experience in everyday life.
Mixed media on canvas, 76 x 76cm
Mixed media, 50 x 46
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 55 x 65cm
Mixed media on canvas, 65 x 75cm
Mixed media on canvas, 50 x 40cm
Mixed media on canvas, 60 x 50cm
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 70 x 76cm
Mixed media on canvas, 60 x 50cm
Mixed media, 60 x 50cm
Mixed media on canvas, 91 x 60cm
The paintings are made from an improvisational approach where mark, colour and form evolve. Experimentation is an important element, as such I try to wrong foot myself, so that the unexpected is given space. I start a painting not knowing where it is going and what materializes is a relationship between the activity of painting, drawing and attempts at trying to make something happen. I try to generate an emotional pull in the work through creating different atmospheres. This sometimes has a weather type feel that draws on the landscape.
mixed media on canvas and board, 83 x 101cm
mixed media on canvas, 54 x 46cm
mixed media on canvas
mixed media, canvas
mixed media, canvas, 70 x 60cm
mixed media, canvas and board
mixed media on paper, A4
mixed media on paper, A4
Oil on canvas
Mixed media
Through the Surface Series a rigour around painting within a predetermined frame work is persued. A periphery of limited means is defined with an emphasise on the repeated brush mark, pattern and colour. Once completed the work has an unpredictable quality as subtle variations arise from the hand made rather than the mechanistic. This is further enhanced by light and the way the surface is activated allowing for a narrative to form relating to familiar patterns found in nature.