With an interest in papermaking and laborious crafts, Bethany Stead’s response to Marion Adnams’ Variation on Red comprises drawing and painting, framed with the raw edges of Lokta paper, referencing the drawing-like quality of the paper dolls that Adnams’ made and worked from. Stead’s work explores interchangeable bodies, gender, clothing, health, and class, inspired by science-fiction, psychoanalysis, and magical realism. Researching the key symbolic components in Variation on Red; the dark sky, the body of water, the scallop shells, the figure and it’s sharply cut red dress, Stead reimagined the figure looking back at themselves, in a dystopian scene from the past, present, or future.
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