Pass Her By
The artwork was made in response to 6 research workshops I facilitated at Antifreeze in Autumn 2019. The research explored approaches that may potentially enable women experiencing homelessness to create a space to share their creative skills and ideas.
Women experiencing homelessness are an unseen part of society, and the number of participants who attended the research sessions was low. Some of those who did attend went to great lengths to be there. In response, my performance is a 5-mile walk across the streets of Brighton, inspired by one of the women who walked 1 ½ hours to attend a workshop. It aims to acknowledge and value the landscape these women experience daily and raise awareness of who inhabits the fabric of the landscape.
Four households participated in the performance, their purpose being to respond and record as I passed by their homes. The mixture of reactions and the environment influenced how visible I wanted to be throughout the performance.
During the performance, I wore the costume ‘Creative Baggage’, made from scraps of found and collected materials from my previous creative adventures. I stitched the pieces together allowing something that would potentially be invisible or disregarded to be turned into something of value and beauty. Creative Baggage is inspired by the women I met during the workshops. My costume explored how creativity can be carried around. In the context of the homeless women, this could be their bags of cross-stitch, their dreams for the future, or their memories of making art.
The 3-hour performance took place on 6th June 2020
View more artworks and information about Pass Her By here: lucymytton.wordpress.com
