Caroline Broadhead

The original motivation for making these pieces was trying to create a surface around a non- existent chain link, a boundary between inside and out. As I developed the idea, I found a method of hingeing the tubular structures which allowed views of interior and exterior, walls and spaces.

Hollow Chain Stripe

Hollow Chain dark

These necklaces have been in my mind for a long time, and half made for a few years. Slipping off the neck, in the act of dropping and in need of another necklace to catch and hold it.

Exploring the notion that things considered rare or precious are very often hidden away whether that is within the earth itself or jewellery that might be stored away from people’s gaze. Here, the raw amber nuggets have been interrupted on their journey towards being made into a precious object and are reburied unworked in a necklace.

I was always impressed by the explosion of different hair styles in the late 70s, with novel colours and extraordinary structures formed around the head. I like that necklaces and hair are used to frame the face. The spikes of hair in my pieces are relaxed rather than stiff, and create a ‘shadow’ or echo of the spikes that stood upright on the head.

Who Cares is a series of short videos using using thermal imaging. Made in collaboration with choreographer Angela Woodhouse.

The project reflects on the role of touch as a signifier of care, contamination, intimacy and trust. Informed by conversation with NHS staff post pandemic.

Magic Carpet was made during the lockdown months of 2021. Feeling rooted to the spot, I also felt the need to escape somehow. Something placed on the floor is vulnerable and might be considered a lowly position, but in legends, a carpet has the potential to transport you somewhere wonderful. Approaching it, when a distant viewpoint changes to a closer one, the shift of attention might be to consider the consequence of treading on a fragile glass surface. It is this moment I am interested in as, in the wider context, our actions have much more serious consequences.

This series of works were made for the One Thing and Another exhibition at Gallery S O in 2020.

Sewing tiny pieces of glass together repeatedly embodies the act of bringing things together to form something else. I am intrigued by the change of character from a hard and brittle material, glass, to a flexible one and how one material might mimic another. I like the idea of one sort of beads portraying another sort of beads.

I have always been interested in things that change, objects that can have two identities or perform two tasks. The nets of glass beads hold an image of pearl jewellery and when stretched out can be worn round the neck as a sort of scarf.

Blanket was made in the first UK lockdown in 2020. The blanket takes reference from knitted square blankets, where individuals within a community each contribute a few squares, which were eventually stitched together and given to someone in need. Being in isolation, this blanket was completed by one person, marking the time by beading one square a day.

2017

A collaborative work by Caroline Broadhead, Angela Woodhouse, and Nic Sandiland, commissioned by Nottingham City Museums and Galleries with support from the Arts Council England Grants for the Arts.

Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire

Created for the magnificent Prospect Room at Wollaton Hall, with its views across the surrounding park and city beyond, the installation offered a unique experience of an area of the house rarely visited by the public.

Inspiration was taken from the emerging divisions between social classes, manifested in the hierarchical architecture and embellishments of Wollaton Hall, notably the lowly servants’ quarters hidden from view and the upper spacious rooms of the landowners, the red felted doors that separated these areas and the C17th embroidered costumes of the Middleton family.

Eight videos of dance were embedded into items of furniture or objects.

Photo: Caroline Broadhead

http://angelawoodhouse.co.uk/recent-past-work/close-distance/

2014

Finding, an exhibition at Foundling Museum, London

The parent, when handing over a child to the Foundling Hospital, was encouraged to leave a piece of cloth to identify themselves in the event of returning for their child and this was cut from their baby’s clothing or their own. This work reflects upon the significance of the cut, the separation of a part from a whole and the hole this must have left behind. Although the foundlings were looked after, fed and educated they did not get the warmth and affection normally associated with family life. A blanket usually offers warmth and comfort, but this blanket of glass beads does not offer that sense of protection, it is mostly made up of holes. The parent also left a token behind, sometimes a piece of jewellery. A second-hand double stringed necklace of artificial pearls is woven into the blanket, opened out to form a larger gaping hole – the mother’s loss.

2019

Residency and exhibition at National Glass Centre, Sunderland with Maisie Broadhead

The world is full of billions of windows, filters for light, vision, wind and warmth. These are the vulnerable element of a building, brittle and breakable. They bring the light in and offer a view out to another world. There is also the potential to look in - to satisfy curiosity about how others live, what they surround themselves with.

At the divide between inside and outside, the curtain, and particularly a lace curtain, is a marker of territory, protecting privacy and acting as a layer of protection from an outsider’s gaze and the decorative pattern softens this defensive function. It is also a screen with a balance of space and substance, which captures attention but also gives a choice of where to look, at the curtain and its pattern or what is hiding behind it.

Photos by David Williams

2019

Solo exhibition at Marsden Woo Gallery, London

Caroline Broadhead’s new body of work sees the artist returning to the chair form. She’s drawn to their familiarity of design, and their physical closeness to the body. Chairs and stools are made to support the body and their dimensions are dependent on the body’s dimensions. They have corporeal terms - a seat, a back, legs and often arms and feet. She enjoys interfering with the functional aspect of these pieces to render them unstable and unreliant whether they are made weaker, wrapped in a jewel-like surface, or hollowed. In doing so, she creates a discourse around material and expectation.

Broadhead demonstrates her diverse practice by incorporating intricately beaded pieces in this exhibition, further teasing out how images are not fixed, but easily lost and made meaningless. Other works shown include two picture frames, dissected and then reconstructed. These create flexible structures which lack the rigidity needed to create a certain boundary to an image.

These acts of transformation and reinvention, taking familiar objects and upending our perception of them, create a kind of kinetic energy that is uniquely hers.’ 

Marsden Woo Gallery

Photos: Jack Cole

2016

Originally made for an exhibition Chain at Galerie SO, London, exploring the narratives, symbolism and complexity of associations of a chain, mine celebrated 'teamwork' the idea of many small units defining the outline of each link and together forming a coherent whole.

Photo: Jack Cole

2011

A collaborative project with Maisie Broadhead

Marsden Woo Gallery, London

The starting points were the seven paintings which we chose because of the inclusion of a significant empty chair played an important role. The chairs indicated an expected or recently departed presence, a sense of disorder as when overturned in Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode series, or status, as in the child’s throne in Velasquez’s Prince Felipe. I interpreted the chairs in three dimensions and Maisie photographed them in a reworked and contemporary setting.

Photos: Philip Sayer

maisiebroadhead.com

1990

We all wear layers of clothing, from the garments worn next to the body, seen only by intimates, and the next layer worn to be seen as a social being, and then the outer protective layers for warmth or protection. Outlines of these garments were laid out on a wall, like specimens, mapping the degrees of intimacy. They were like drawings, but were neither completely two-dimensional nor three.

2010

A collaboration with choreographer, Angela Woodhouse and made in close co-operation with performers Stine Nilsen, David McCormick and Martina Conti

Between was commissioned by Trinity Laban and funded by Arts Council England, with additional support from Central Saint Martins

Performed at:

Trinity Laban, London 2011

Oxford Playhouse, 2011

Roehampton University, 2011

Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2011

Oxford Playhouse, 2012

Pavilion Dance, Bournemouth 2012

Nightingale, Brighton 2012

Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, 2012

Central Saint Martins in collaboration with The Place, London, 2013

1997

A collaboration with choreographer, Angela Woodhouse

The Waiting Game was a promenade performance in the small garrison of Upnor Castle, on the River Medway, Kent, which played a part in the Dutch Raid in 1667.

The white dress was inspired by the idea of an unrecorded female presence. The audience came down the steps into the room and had to tread on the dancer’s dress, which allowed her to move in a particular way, to pull away. The audience acted as both an anchor and invader and as such became an integral part of the dance. The idea of trespassing on the dancer’s dress was to offer a personally felt experience, which could lead to a recognition of how larger and more dangerous conflicts arise. 

The idea of working with coats came from the records of the castle which recorded incidents of soldiers changing sides to fight for the enemy, ‘turncoats’. The half-coats could be worn in several ways, joined together to be buff coloured, turned inside out to be orange and the movement of the dancers – holding, turning, whipping to reveal the under colour. Eventually the half-coats were pulled out to be half buff and half orange and all the dancers wore this ‘uniform’.

photos:

Hugo Glendinning

1984

Tracing a life through birth to death in seven parts, this piece referred to the All the World’s a Stage speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Each was made with a different white fabric to indicate the associated activity or stage. Made over two years, I started out with a self-imposed directive for pieces to be able to be worn, but during this period, I realised this was not an essential element for me. As they were being made I was taking the measurements from my body and trying them on, and performance became another way of presenting and exploring them.

Photos: David Ward

2005

A York Museums Trust commission

With soundtrack by Graeme Miller

Breathing Space divided the space of the building, a deconsecrated church, defining and separating two distinct areas into higher and lower, one accessible, the other not. The suspended ceiling lowered the height from 9 metres to about 2 metres. It was made of textile material, forming a low translucent structure. The whole of the space was covered and having a low ceiling meant that at some points you were almost touching it, which gave an oppressive feeling. As it was translucent and there was light above, you were aware of a space beyond, but couldn’t see it. The main entrance led you to the ground floor, but you could re-enter the building and come in at a higher level, where you could look down on the space, which gave a different view.

1999

Still Light was installed over several days stitching fine elastane threads from the window to the carpet. It came from sitting in a cold studio and moving my chair to be in the patch of sunlight as it moved round. I was interested in stilling an image, as in a photograph, capturing a moment.

I wanted the light to be seen as a volume, penetrating the building.

Previous to this work, I had been exploring shadows and thinking about the volume of shade as it formed a shadow. I had been using artificial lighting with a distance I could measure between light source and object, so I was excited by the thought that this piece intimated a connection between something far away, the sun or moon, and the place where you were standing.

Photo: Gary Kirkham