PRESS RELEASE 04.11.22

 Emma Gregory exhibition, Care & Control at Birley Artist Studios

ArtLab Contemporary Print Studios and Birley Artist Studios present Care & Control, a solo exhibition of fabric sculptures, intimate prints and playful ceramics by Emma Gregory, a visual artist who deals with human emotion and particularly the inner lives of women with heart-rending poignancy and saucy humour.

Spanning four years of Gregory’s prolific practice, Care & Control highlights the artist’s formal interest in craft and the domestic, and takes as its subject matter the nature of caregiving and the roles we adopt to create a functioning home. 

Employing diverse materials and processes, the artworks reflect Gregory’s equally varied work life, as a former scenic artist, prop-maker and heritage upholsterer. They include a trio of giant pop-up puppets, a skirt made of roof tiles, photographic records of body-based play and an absurdly long bra strap that cuts through the space. Much of the making was done on her kitchen table, creating a continuum between the domestic and the studio, from materials appropriated directly from her home life such as a dissected single mattress and tea towels.

 The artworks in this show emerge from autobiographical experiences; the artist’s anxiety at motherhood, shaped by the multi-layered interaction of abuse disguised as healthcare, surviving brain trauma and postpartum psychosis. But despite the unblinking presence of these experiences Gregory’s mode is to offer space for multiple narratives, playing with broader themes: the gendering of caregiving; how to become a woman, or a mother; navigating conversational codes about sex or confronting the dynamics of distance and unfamiliarity in our closest relationships. Capability, capacity, desire – all of these are grown both into and out of. Big shifts take place with age, and the deal must be renegotiated. We adapt and relationships change. 

 Emma Gregory says of caregiving: 

 “A deal is struck when care is given but needs change over time.  Take hair for example, a good plait involves pulling and maintaining tension. This is a physical tension seen and felt but there’s emotional tension too, on both sides: a mother has to make it good in the time available; a daughter must allow it to be done FOR her and TO her. What a performance. 

 The end of adolescence is often marked by a significant hair-cut so a plait can be viewed both as a reminder of the exact point when values shifted and the time it took to grow the hair long in the first place and a literal ‘letting-go’.”  

  Notes to editors:

 Dates:  Monday 14th to Saturday 19th November 2022

Times: 11am – 4pm

Address:  The Birley, Birley Street, Preston, PR1 2QE

The Partners: 

Artlab Contemporary Print Studios is a practice-based research unit within UCLan focussing on the development of contemporary printmaking through actively expanded practice with international partnerships, collaboration, and experimentation at the core. A unique mix of tradition and innovation, the Studios are run by artist-researchers Tracy Hill and Magda Stawarska-Beavan. 

 Established in 2014, Birley Artist Studios was set up by Post Post CIC, a not-for-profit organisation made up of UCLan arts and media graduates, to be artist-led with up to 30 resident artists and project spaces for socially engaged initiatives in Preston. The Birley is based in a former Preston City Council office building in the ‘markets area’ of the city centre. 

 Work towards this exhibition has been generously supported by Arts Council England.