C.

                         The one with the soft shoulders and the ridges at varying angles

                         I keep moving back, relaxed coat, neoprene. A’s everyday

                         glasses are faux horn rimmed, she says when she works

                         in the cinema older unexpected people always say how much

                         they like them. They are big for her face and I remember

                         when I was at secondary school friends wore the exact same style.

                         you said wear white more often, recently I have been, mostly

                         tailored white shirts, in silk or cotton lawn with small collars and tight cuffs,

                         I button up the top button, it pulls me together although I know you don’t

                         like it. Neon yellow underwear seen through the thin cloth has a

                         quiet pique, and then I remember I’m not sure where I left it,

                         although I do remember how I wore it.

                                                                                                                    When I was in C I bought some stuff in Pilsen, it took

                                                                                                                    me an hour and a half to walk there, I got totally lost. I

                                                                                                                    found a 70’s quilted jacket with a hand-blocked

                                                                                                                    geometric design it’s kind of Elizabethan with curved

                                                                                                                    pinched shoulders. I wore it to meet C and she          

                                                                                                                    immediately said hey that jacket looks like one of C’s

                                                                                                                    paintings. I had wondered whether C would notice the           

                                                                                                                    jacket. I have these African bracelets too, black

                                                                                                                    banding over pastel colours, sympathetic, gradated

                                                                                                                    sections like some of the striated surfaces in C’s

                                                                                                                    paintings, the morning before I met C I thought about

                                                                                                                    wearing them and the jacket but later on when I was

                                                                                                                    sat outside waiting to meet C I took the bangles off.

                                                                                                                                                                                                         N.

                          Outside exterior voice

                          Although recognisably a female form the body is absent. Arms and shoulders taper into a trunk, hips meet thigh, ass distended and                  

                          then silhouette.
 Looking back at ourselves, the absent body present in the headless painting, we are familiar from the inside out and the  

                          outside in. Felt and observed. Breaking down with equivocation and then breaking up again. Change and mutability our new strengths. 

                          Quietly suggested, confidently re-drawn.

                          Louder Outside exterior voice

                          This black outline an assertion forming a single shape, a monolith of parts. Unexpectedly unruly, obliquely feminine. Our red blouse 

                          agape tucks into a flattened belt, patterned stockings a geometric fishnet unravelling from the seams. Violence an action with an equal 

                          opposite reaction. Welts on skin, the painting’s support, a cold light grey with pallid yellow tinge.

                          From the artery of the stocking’s laddered strands the surrounding tissue colours red and half a waistcoat, dirty khaki, over sewn with 

                          an indigo Thai silk shadows a pleated drape which continues to escapes from the collar and cuff. Lengths of broken furniture 

                          horizontally accumulate becoming ribs then pelvis, collarbone and shoulder, both fractured arm and flattering appendage, perpendicular 

                          to the side of the frame.

                          Sophie
, Monday 20th June 2016

                          I told you about the specific article on Dominic Straus-Kahn I was looking for. The writer wrote something like ‘Was it that Nafissatou 

                          Diallo, the maid cleaning the hotel room, just could not resist the sweaty, white, pot-bellied body of  Straus-Kahn. ‘Could she just not 

                          help herself when she saw the managing director of IMF’s irresistible overweight, pallid flesh?’

                          Outside exterior voice insistent

                          Small light from the dull grey background, gaps beyond the reforming body picture negative space and inside the torso a room hung 

                          with a painting or possibly a mirror remains uninhabited, attendant. In miniature a complete red blouse hangs in reverse, upended 

                          forming a vagina. Psychology and physicality inextricable but not reduced. A stalwart and a matrix, a tissue forming substance, a soil or 

                          rock containing something like the main part of an alloy, an arrangement of mathematical elements, a network of circuit parts, a 

                          surrounding mass of material, a will, an action, a determinate volition. A strength, an empathy, something so big, so particular, shared 

                          and recognised. A hidden language blatantly apparent, care, thought, consideration and attention, a set of complex thoughts and 

                          physical reactions momentarily held together then released.

                          Sophie

                          The M.D. Uniform by Marguerite Duras

                          Madeleine Renaud is dressed by Yves Saint-Laurent: he makes her some dresses, someone puts them on her, and lo and behold she  

                          goes about in them. You wonder if she knows that the dress she's wearing is new. These days Madeleine doesn't know so much as she 

                          used to. But we’re very fond of one another, and I think she still knows that. I often think she and I are the only two women who don’t 

                          care about the clothes they wear.

                          Outside exterior voice fatigued

                          Salmon pink gives way to a burnt orange, wood grain sliced vertically then horizontally reveals stained teak, burnished ebony, cherry 

                          wood and walnut, the broad plane of a table, the back of a chair, a physical form composed of the domestic.

                          Assume the chair back, the table, the mirror, the clothing and the empty room, unconsciously subverted, these constituent parts: soft 

                          furnishing, pattern template, collar, inside sleeve, laddered stocking, urbanite in shoulder padded suit and as a double-bind unchained, 

                          unhinged ultimately uncoupled.

                          In disorder, tattered force, something new. Personal Problems

                          Sophie says
 

                          WE ARE VERY PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT TANYA LEIGHTON GALLERY NOW REPRESENTS MARIANNE WEX

                          Nadia..........I say as Christina said

                          1. different size forms


                          2. take apart a faded cotton garment so opened fabric shows seam lines and insides of seams where fabric hasn’t faded and remake  

                          this into something else

                          3. take three gathered cotton shirts, cut them horizontally and reassemble them

                          4. sew twigs on

                          5. make carrier (fabric) to hold small items on

                          6. a sleeve with wide top and impossibly small wrist

                          7. cut a sleeve off at the elbow, sew on a different sleeve, splice

                          8. a cotton gathered skirt with a
lining that is longer than the skirt, so it hangs and shows

                          9. braided fabric strips made into a stiff jacket

                         10. a skirt made from several skirts some pleated some gathered etc.


                         11. natural wood sketches to give garment shape

                         12. foam lining


                         13. bulky objects between garment a lining to feel

                         14. doll clothes, baby clothes for various parts


                         15. is this what Margaret Wharton does with chairs?

                         16. crocheted stripes made into a garment

                         17. painted fabric

                          excerpt from Text 

                          Sophie Macpherson and Nadia Hebson May/June/July 2016

.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              .

.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                .