The clothes we wear replicate a body shape and envelope a memory, of a time or occasion we wore them. In children’s stories, garments are invested with special powers, and although today’s real-life equivalents sparkle less, they are no less protective: the face mask, surgical gloves and apron; the PPE synonymous with 2020/21, when our mouths disappeared behind a fabric wrapper and the sight of a care worker’s apron became a badge of honour.

During lockdown, Deborah Nash used kitchen materials - plain flour and water - to mix paste and draw on old shirts, upcycling them into artwork diaries, annotated with the catch-phrases of the terrible twins, Brexit and Covid, yoking political jargon with autobiography. Words written in shapes within the boundaries of the body express the limits of language and the narrowness of present-day circumstance, while a uniform is close to body and heart, vulnerable and fallible, symptomatic of a fragmented world.

https://www.whatmoreproductions.co.uk

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