Dark Silhouette - exhibition at M16, Griffith Canberra April 2024

My exhibition, “Dark Silhouette”, draws its name from a black paint swatch collected from a hardware store.

As I handled the paint swatches, I realised that the evocative titles had multiple interpretations and at times, sinister connotations.

I created a story of women’s lived experience of coercive control.

I focused on four phases that occur in and after a coercive controlling relationship:

1. the early love-bombing and the elated feeling of finding ‘the one’

2. the controlling stage and the experience of abuse, fear and confusion

3. the frantic and terrifying activity during the escape and

4. the long, circular journey towards healing.

I used the paint swatch titles and the symbolism of the feminine craft of quilting to illustrate the feelings, emotions and thoughts experienced in each phase.

Using sources from social media, I captured women’s responses and wrote them as vignettes on each swatch.

The words were chosen to be overwhelming, referencing the all-consuming beliefs and reactions that dominate each of these experiences.

As a society and a culture, we have to stop violence against women.  On average one women per week loses her life to male perpetrated violence.

Tens of thousands of other women suffer emotional and physical abuse, terrified of being in their homes and of living a full life.  This is unacceptable and not a culture I want to be a part of.

We have to shift beyond a societal attitude of “why doesn’t she just leave?”and “where are the bruises?”

We have to listen to victim-survivors to fully understand the complexity and dynamics of coercive controlling relationships and the extreme difficulty and risks of leaving.

Men who are perpetrators have to stop. They have to understand why they do what they do and change. This takes courage, growth and work. They have to be held accountable.

We have to stop raising kids who think abuse is ok.

These artworks are intended to give voice to women’s lived experiences which often remain silent due to the sheer weight of trauma and the inability of others to listen.

These quilts are a contribution to women’s voices protesting against this culture of abuse against women.

While the stories in this work are written in first person, they do not form an autobiography. They have been gathered from many women’s stories shared publicly in articles, books and social media posts.