Marie-Therese Dawes

As a textile artist who shares her time between Northumberland and East London, I enjoy the contrast between the man-made and natural world, the echoes between them, and how they shape each other. Like its physical counterpart, the cultural landscape is ever-changing, with the passing of time, things built to last, and those swept away.

Nature is rarely wrong in her eclectic colour palette, and my walks around Royal Docks are a revelation of these hues, the urban wildlife and the waterways contrasted by, and mimicked in, the industrial buildings and gleaming tower blocks. 

I set my work within a gallery context as interacting with my audience is the heart of my process. I see the exhibition of the work as a moment to pause and reflect, that the reception and response are key moments in the creative process, after all, art is a conversation that should never end.

Master Thesis awarded Distinction Reframing Troy: A Mythical Exhibition of Female Virtue (2022) 

The challenge I set myself for this year was to make the work's physical and cerebral elements as bold, rigorous, and ambitious as possible. The Royal College has taught me to have confidence and I see that challenge expanding before me.  

The dollhouse is a solution to how to move forward from the RCA.

It will travel with me, or rather it is an extension of me – the catalogue is a prototype, it is a curatorial dream, and as such exists beyond time, much as a story does. It is the past, present and future possibilities - a projection into the dream space of what I want my work to be. 

The dollhouse is the overarching theme of my artistic philosophy and, just like a real house, I imagine I will be redecorating and furnishing it for a lifetime.  I will use it as a cultural touchstone through which I will filter my ideas, to continue to explore the realities of the lives of women and the human condition. I see the possibilities to display it in endless different ways, in different contexts, and maybe one day all at once.

My first year at the RCA was spent enclosing books – in some cases cocooning the meaning, in others rendering them shut. The Gallery Context Project confirmed for me that my practice would reach its conclusions – if one ever really reaches a conclusion – in the display.

Alongside this I was working towards my dissertation, I set about curatorially dreaming, and my fantasy exhibition catalogue earned me a distinction.

This Year was an exploration of my own family, the history of feminism, and female artists. I found my voice and became confident of what I wanted to say.