Jennifer’s artwork engages in a critical yet playful exploration of the fashioned body using a range of media that includes photography, drawing, sound and objects. Her work provokes the viewer to evaluate the construction of fashioned identity as well as the embodied experience of dress. Jennifer’s work although wide-ranging always centres on dressed bodies and draws explicitly upon her commercial experience in fashion.

She is Associate Professor of the Art of Fashion at Solent University, Southampton. Jennifer is currently working on Fashioning the Voice, in collaboration with Tract + Touch and Dr. Tychonas Michalidis, generously funded by Arts Council England and Solent University.

Exhibitions

• Embodied Memories

Embodied Memories was commissioned by the John Hansard Gallery and developed through Art at the Heart, a partnership of key arts organisations in Southampton working to bring the city’s emerging cultural quarter to life. Supported by Solent Research & Enterprise and CREADM. Jennifer Comments:

“The primary reference for the pieces made for this exhibition are verbal descriptions, making the crux of the project individual memories of precious items of clothing, material and accessories and, inextricably, the part these items played in the construction of self image for the people who spoke to me.”

Developed from research undertaken with local people who shopped at the iconic department store Tyrrell and Green, Jennifer’s subtle reinventions are touching, at times humorous but always respectful, and explore the distance between memory, communication and interpretation.
The work was exhibited by the John Hansard Gallery in 2012 and in 2017 as part of the National Humanities Festival, Being Human. The catalogue that accompanied the exhibition with essays by Claire Masnet, Samantha Erin Safer and Jennifer Anyan is available from Cornerhouse Publications.