Tabitha Moses - Previous Practice

The acquisition of materials is an important part of Tabitha’s practice. She creates artefacts from collected materials that bear the mark of time and weight of memory, exploring the psychic and physical impressions left by previous owners. Inspiration lies in folk art and ethnographic exhibits where recycling often necessitates altered contexts of utility and incongruous materials, often triggering unexpected associations.

The objects she makes become tokens of remembrance, as souvenirs and relics. Some are exquisitely handstitched, which from a distance appear seductive, but close up they may induce repulsion – materials marked with bodily fluids, stitches of human hair – charged with emotion and challenging the viewer’s notion of beauty.

Authenticity is also challenged; the framing of discarded material in a cabinet, with labels, immediately confers a preciousness and vulnerability.

Tabitha creates ambivalent artefacts that both delight and provoke. She has also recently explored the performative aspects of making work, spending four days unpicking discarded clothing and hand stitching a nun’s habit which she put on as the pieces were made – an exercise in endurance, transcending her physical surrounds, but also provoking a range of responses from her audience.