Charlotte Daffern
Artist Statement
My work is a multi-faceted and ambiguous realisation of my perception of culture and personal experiences.
The result is a range of creative objects that relate to questions of gender, fashion, sociology, culture and history.
I began by exploring concepts of ‘Britishness’ and its associated visual stereotypes.
My visual investigations correspond to the current nostalgia for 1950’s aesthetics, activities and traditional values.
Our current economic climate has seen the re-emergence of make do and mend through up-cycling, re-cycling and re-using.
Domestic crafts such as knitting, baking and burlesque dancing have made reappearance and are considered ‘trendy’.
Additional themes come from feminist debates in response to this resurgence and relate to issues surrounding the pursuit
of feminine fulfilment, gender role representation and experimentation.
I begin by identifying visual symbols that can be transferred into cloth to create figurative representations of the initial ideas.
The visual symbols are deconstructed, repeated, multiplied and explored through scale and positioning. Each element is intended
to be a prototypical simulacrum and de-centred to cross reference contexts and explore the concepts.
I aim to present my understanding of the complexities of these ideas juxtaposed with preconceived stereotypes in an original creative format.
