Rachy Duffield

  This piece is quite simply an attempt to capture the contrast between the usual 'dear little old lady' archetype we are all fed, and the nature of my mother. The twee coin purse bearing a cute kitten, the lavender lace and the typical elderly shopping list of rice pudding and custard all belie the last item on the list: an instruction to FUCK OFF.  After my mother's death, a shopping list much like this was found in her kitchen, the unremarkable food items written on a scrap of notepaper in blue biro. The list had a surprising last item of shopping, an expletive written in red capitals. I don't know who -if anyone- the list was for.  The 'tongue' unfurls from the purse, ready to lash out at the unsuspecting shopper.  ******************************** Hand embroidered lilac-grey lace emerging from a charity-shop purse. 

One of my mother's more unintentionally amusing insults, 'Sex Crazed Urbanites' was the label she gave my cousin and I when we lived in Norwich. No idea why. Probably because we were both unmarried young women with jobs and boyfriends. In a city.  I created the pink neon ribbon because 'Sex Crazed Urbanites' sounds like a good name for a terrible 1980s female punk rock band. The ribbon is tied around a neon stationery box containing neatly printed words: also insults my mother hurled at me, usually if I attempted to dress vaguely fashionably, or go out to any unapproved event or venue. Of course, I never knew which venues or events were approved or not - that was entirely dependent on my mother's mood at the time. The stationery box was inspired by a matchbox of words we found in her jewellery box. I can't remember the exact words, but I remember they were nasty. The matchbox was tucked into one corner of the jewellery box- which, incidentally, was filthy, f...

The embroidery on the inside of this purse represents the internal monologue my mother gave me through the words she spoke repeatedly for decades. On the outside are words my father said- barely visible, but indelible in impact.  The purse is representative of many we found tucked away in my mother's bedroom when we cleared her house after her death.  Initially we cleared a light debris of scattered rice pudding tins and all the prescription meds she hadn't been taking. Then we moved on to the contents of her cupboards. Centre stage was her chest of drawers, tacky with badly applied paint effects and tea-stains. In the top drawer we discovered a range of bedraggled little drawstring bags in different sizes and colours. Opening each one revealed a further small and tatty gift box or purse, and inside each of those, a further grubby trinket box or tiny organza bag- the sort cheap jewellery usually comes in- and then within that, a selection of odd items; maybe a broken earring c...