'I am exploring issues around power, control and change in two distinct yet connected areas of the environment and feminism. I mainly work in sculpture and installation, but also drawing, printing, short video and performance. 

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Through my ongoing body of work questioning and responding to patriarchy and violence against women I take the iconic mens’ business suit and subvert its status- systematically deconstructing, re-configuring and re-characterising it. With a focus on dismantling and manipulation, seams are surgically picked apart, material cut, shred, heavily frayed, then pinned, stuffed, hung and embedded with various internal and external forms.

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Repeatedly the paired down, de-natured suit parts co-opt female elements: multiple suit pockets are poured full of plaster to resemble udders and remind us of breast feeding- life giving.  Hundreds of ceramic blood red fingerprints create a menstrual-like flow from the scant remains of a pair of unzippered trousers. Though some pieces clearly express anger and frustration at the weight of the subject (all that shredding!) there is playful humour - mascara applied heavily to the fibres of frayed shoulder pads- and optimism, as a bunch of latex nipple casts, vigorously grow upwards like flowers. 

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The suits have been taken in, altered and are in a process of change'.

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Sally Barker