B.

Bomber Jacket for Marilyn Waring is part of a series by artist Emma Fitts paying homage to women whose lives and influence she admired. After spending time studying in Glasgow, Emma made this work in 2014 when she returned to Aotearoa New Zealand to take up a residency for the Olivia Spencer Bower Award. Suggesting a garment in preparation on the cutting-room table, it invents a partial, unfinished attire for a New Zealand politician, activist, and economist whose writing on women’s unpaid work remains influential and relevant.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Emma Fitts has created an abstract portrait of sorts in her collaged fabric tribute to Marlow Moss. Marlow was a British modernist painter and sculptor who in around 1919 renamed herself (from Marjorie Moss), adopted standard masculine attire, and worked in a refined constructivist style until the 1950s. Made during her Olivia Spencer Bower Award project in Ōtautahi Christchurch in 2014, Emma combined an interest in overlooked histories with formalist concerns, using salvaged silk scarves and woven plaid cloth to construct a personal gallery of role models and protagonists.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )