Labour of Love 

 
2025, Materials: A cross stitch of over 6,500 stitches that took 9 months to make, forming a lone parent emoji, paired with a sound piece. The script was written using words from the lone parent channel on mums.net and voiced by mothers themselves. Framed dimensions: 51.5cm x 53cm x 1.5cm




Image credit: Installation view: 'Autumn Almanac V', 2025, Persistence Works, Sheffield. Photography by James Clarkson, courtesy of Yorkshire Artspace.

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Image credit: Yorkshire Art Space, 2025                                                                                                                                                                           Image credit: Theresa Bruno, 2025 

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 Image credit: Theresa Bruno, 2024

Special thanks to mums Lindsay, Lisa and Lily Muir and an anonymous mum.

A big theme in my work during the time of making this piece, was acknowledging and honouring aspects of my life that I grew up in. I was reading Natalie Olah’s Class book (Tate Series), where she noted that the representation of the family unit in modern art history was typically the nuclear family. It made me reflect on how that traditional set up didn’t work out in our family, I was 14 when my mum became a single lone parent. I looked around in culture, and I didn’t see many representations of the lone parent myth...I was reflecting on the topic for a few months and it was when I was in a shopping centre car park and I saw a road marking depicting a family car parking spot with a dad and a mum, that I realised I wanted to make a piece about being brought up in a single parent family unit.

During this time, I was coming out of a 6 year career break where I had lost the momentum of having lots of ideas for pieces of work to make. When I spotted the single parent emoji, I just ran with it, without thinking too much. I wanted to honour whatever idea came, despite knowing it was literal or obvious. I was finding my feet through making this piece, so I didn’t put pressure on myself or expect the perfect piece of work. In hindsight, although I’m aware that emojis are complex when it comes to representation, I am still glad that I used an emoji. I have thought often about who this work is for, in a way, it isn’t for the elitest art market. It is for the community that it’s about. So I dont want the aesthetic to be intelllectually inaccessible or ambigious, etc. I would find that inappropriate. Whilst making, I thought about how the art world is trying to be more accessible, opening up opportunities to working class communities, but often the taste makers will only allow artists to break through who conform to the art markets current aesthetic, which is incredibly elitest and inaccessible to most of the population. For me this piece is a rebellion against taste of the art world. Replicating the emoji though cross stitch took 9.5 months. It was an incredibly labour intensive project, the act of sewing 6,500+ stitches became an act of devotion and gratitude. Just as the single family unit is worth monumentalising, so too is the emoji - afterall, why should I make work that conforms to an elistest aethstic that has nothing to do with where I come from. It’s not my world. Because I went to art school, I have the cultural capital to make work like that, but I simply don’t want to with this piece. The cross stitch too is an accessible and relative cheap medium, not a elitest art material, all these decisions are delibrate to explore accessibility, worth, value etc.

Whilst recording the piece, it was the first time that I’d recorded sound clips with human beings and I invited women who have all been single mums at some point. Recording live with people brought a whole set of unanticipated challenges and its by no means perfect, but I learned alot. I wrote the script for the sound piece, using mums.net lone parent channel. It is a place where lots of lone parents who don’t have support networks, share information and support each other. I was often moved to tears when reading the stories of people’s lives and witnessing others helping, supporting, sharing and encouraging each other. Often in mainstream media, the lone parent unit is narrated as the ‘Broken Home’, it is stereotyped towards a negative bias. Whilst dwelling in this community, I witnessed the full breadth of it, it is incredibly difficult but there are so many moments of joy, humour and huge achievement. This why the frame is colourful and joyful, I sourced the colour pallete from the emoji colours - the gaudy colour pallete again, questioning value and taste as historically they’re not taken seriously in the art canon. Whilst researching and writing, I was reminded of the felt sense of what growing up in single family units feel like. The problems that come from it, but also the beauty. I realised just how strong and resilient my mum was, and I was moved to tears in gratitude to her. Our lives were not easy, but she worked so hard for me to have access to things she never did. Like art school. This piece is about Labour’s of Love and will always be dedicated, to her.