Jessa Fairbrother

Using my own body as material, I produce work encompassing photography, performance, and stitch. Initially training as an actor (1990s) and completing an MA (Photographic Studies, University of Westminster 2010) amplified my knowledge of how artwork and audience collide. My critical expertise is supported by training in historical hand-embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework through a QEST scholarship awarded in 2019. I hand-perforate or hand-embroider photographs about yearning in detailed long-term projects with a strong relationship to historical collections and mark-making. I use needle-as-pricking-tool in relation to the body and feelings, drawing on archives to make my own ‘preposterous histories’. Solo exhibitions include The Photographers’ Gallery, London (The Print Sales Gallery, 2019, who represent me as an artist), and Birmingham City University (2017). In 2020 and 2023 I was commissioned to make unique work for the Wellcome Collection’s online stories. ‘Conversations with my mother’ (2012-16), my study of maternal grief, has been noted for significant contribution to understanding mourning with scholarship by art-historian Jennifer Mundy published in Tate Papers (2020) and conference presentation at The Freud Museum, London (2018). A substantial amount of this was exhibited at Bristol Museum in 2021, invited by Martin Parr, presented as intervention in the main collection. The artist- book of this is held in UK / US collections (Tate Britain, V&A,Yale Centre for British Art, Museum of Fine Art, Houston). My work is also included in Thames and Hudson’s major survey Body (2019) by art- historian Nathalie Herschdorfer. 

Images (from left)

• Role Play (woman with cushion) 2017, Painted hand-perforated photographs stitched, 1.2 x 1.2 cm (including baton)
• (Detail) Role Play (woman with cushion) 2017, Painted hand-perforated photographs stitched, with baton
• ‘Untitled (Mother with funeral flowers)’ 2013, from Conversations with my mother Hand-printed C-type with funeral flowers. 20 x 30 cm
• ‘Untitled (Mother with nasturtiums)’ 2013, from Conversations with my mother Hand-printed C-type with nasturtium flowers. 20 x 30 cm
• ‘Coordinate XIV’ from Constellations and Coordinates (2019) Hand embroidered hand-printed C-type 12 x 16 cm
• The other side of the mirror II Painted hand-perforated black and white silver gelatin photographs 40 x 60 cm
• The other side of the mirror I Painted hand-perforated black and white silver gelatin photographs 40 x 60 cm