Behind the Desk
‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write’
Was famously written by Virginia Woolf in 1929. If women need space to write, women need space to expand. Making space matters. Taking up space matters. This desk questions;
how much space are women really allowed to take up?
There is no region in England where the average home to rent is affordable for a woman on median earnings and renting takes an average of 43% of our earnings to men’s 28%. To buy a property with a typical mortgage, women’s incomes fall over 50% short in most regions, except in the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber. Men’s incomes only fall over 50% short in London and the South East. (Women’s Budget Group, 2020).
The desk captures studying gender in space whilst working at muf architecture/art and moving between the spaces of architecture, city, protest and activism. The casts represent spaces taken up in the city, spaces where she can expand, which are then collected back into the constricted desk.
The desk is a place for a woman to think and to create space for herself, the desk is an intensively private space, yet public as a woman is always consumed by others.
This piece asks the viewer to climb into the desk, to question themselves, to look within themselves and to consider their bodies in space. The desk asks you to consider the issues of access to space and how this effects each individual, the viewer themselves, women, me, you and others.