An exhibition at The Museum of Technology in Cambridge.
A celebration of the working lives of women in the laundry industry in Cambridge.
Memories of wash days in the home.
New and original artwork by the Freudian Slips.
Stunning images from CAMIRIS – Cambridge women’s photography group.
Stain making and removal – hands on exploration.
Norway & But the trap we also see
My first step was taking these two photographs, one in 2001, in Cambridge from my kitchen window, the other in 2002 in Norway. Only when thinking about the exhibition did I feel I wanted to associate them. I struggled to know why I wanted to, so I looked for words, someone else’s words. The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa gave me something but I was asked why not my own words and tried. I wrote a first poem "Never ending". I exchanged email with Julie Coimbra, another CamIris member and she sent me an Armenian poem called “It’s no secret” which made me realise that I had not told the whole story and I wrote again "I saw my Soul in the Washing Line". I was asked to say more about the yearning I alluded to. So I wrote notes, half in English half in French, to write another poem. That night, I had lots of apparently unrelated nightmares and in the morning I wrote "Hologramme" in French and then a text about seduction to which I gave no name. I could see the story unfolding but was not at all sure which text really belonged to the pictures. I knew the friend I photographed could help me, so I called her and after our conversation I wrote the text to match the pictures "Fly in the storm and in the breeze". I liked the sequence but the text about seduction read like an accusation and if it spoke for me it was incomplete. More conversations and more dreams helped me to bring the two ideas within one realm: wanting and refusing in one person with or without tension from the outside world and I wrote "Désir et Amour : une danse". The sequence of poems can be found here It will all come out in the Wash.