bt
Stephanie is collaborating with post-menopausal women artists, exploring ageing, loss, and transformation. Together they are creating new work that challenges invisibility and celebrates mature women's creativity.
Ageing is an important process but it’s also very annoying. We are a group of like-minded women artists in The Forest who together have been exploring how best to embody the trouble with our bodies.
stephaniejamesarts.com
pl
Women have often been many people and bodies in one. We are transformers, facilitators, negotiators, creators. I am considering the different versions of myself over time and am now working on a painting - “Conversations”. If I could meet up with all the “me’s” I’ve ever been, would I get along with or understand any of my previous selves?
th
Women’s rights are gaining global visibility, yet this progress is met by a persistent resurgence of patriarchal control, where hard-won freedoms are still being challenged or revoked. As women age, they are often presented with two stark paths: to step forward, empowered by their experience and wisdom, or to fade into the background of visibility and influence.
This project aligns firmly with the former, championing empowerment, while remaining sensitive to those who, for complex and personal reasons, feel unable to claim that space. Both realities deserve acknowledgment.
If women’s voices, especially those expressed through quiet or “gentle” protest, continue to be overlooked, there is a real risk that the rights fought for across generations may erode or disappear.
In this context, the body becomes political. With over 200 million women worldwide having experienced Female Genital Mutilation, I have chosen to centre my work on the female genital organ, specifically the clitoris. Historically misunderstood and often ignored, it has long been shrouded in cultural silence and scientific neglect.
Recent research has begun to illuminate its complex neural structure, offering a clearer understanding of its role in pleasure and connection. Greater awareness, among both women and men, has the potential to transform relationships, fostering mutual respect, communication, and deeper intimacy.
At its heart, this work is about restoring joy.
About equality.
Or more precisely, equality within love.
jc
Time Lines considers skin as a quiet record of time. Through layered textures and subtle surfaces, the work reflects the gradual marks of aging—lines, shifts, and traces that speak of lived experience. Photographic elements, including ice, paper, and natural forms, introduce a sense of fragility and transformation, echoing the rhythms of change found in the natural world. Boundaries between body and landscape begin to blur, suggesting a shared process of erosion and renewal. The work invites a slower way of looking, where imperfection and change are not concealed, but held as moments of quiet beauty.
yj
As we journey through our daily routines, our awareness of the environment around us fluctuates. Sometimes we are acutely conscious of what surrounds us, while at other times, our senses are dulled to the details of our setting.
The flora and fauna envelop us, marking the passage of time and the transitions between seasons. Trees, initially bare, gradually sprout new buds that flourish and burst into life, offering shade that we often take for granted. As the months roll on, these vibrant leaves begin to fade, eventually falling away as part of nature’s cycle. This ever-present transformation within the forest serves as a poignant reminder: just as the trees change and age with each season, so do we.
With the arrival and departure of each season, we gain a deeper understanding of our personal life cycle. Our own existence mirrors that of the trees around us, and with time, we are reminded that ageing is a universal experience.
With the arrival and departure of each season, we gain a deeper understanding of our personal life cycle. Our own existence mirrors that of the trees around us, and with time, we are reminded that ageing is a universal experience.
The forest’s flora is intricately connected, with plants reaching out across distances to share, warn, and help one another. This network not only supports the growth and survival of various species but also provides shelter for the animals and people who reside within the environment.
This interconnectedness is mirrored in human behaviour. People form groups and communities, creating support systems that reflect the forest’s way of being. These networks offer assistance and comfort, much like the flora that nurtures and sustains life within the forest.
sj
Frou Frou is a beaded sculpture that portrays the inevitable and uninvited sagging of breasts. It is a specimen. I am hoping that my conversation is enough but if it isn’t then my hair, my make-up my face are the focus of attention. I don’t want my counterpart to look down and note the aging of my sexuality. Frou Frou is a serious but playful attempt to talk about the dying of the light.
ic
The passing of time has intensified the ageing process in our bodies, and the idea of fragmentation has resonated deeply with me throughout this project, especially as I confront a serious health issue.. Normally I work in ceramics and enjoy experimentation with other mediums. But I was drawn – like a moth to a flame - to work with sugar paper. Such a basic, everyday and organic substance: sugar. A constant presence in our lives but now also prominent in my thoughts about my health.
Initially my sugar paper piece was abstract – I enjoyed shaping it, working with its textural quality, playing with shadows. As time passed the paper separated, slowly tearing apart and shrinking, coming unstuck from the surface beneath. It degenerated. I became less in control of the work, but it kept revealing more to me. It was the very embodiment of this project - a fusion point of art and life.
isilceramics.co.uk
js
The initial excitement of being asked to participate in this project quickly waned a little when I began to wonder how I, a photographer whose work was entirely about the natural world, would meet the challenge of producing something about female aging. I shy away from photographing people and so I headed to my large catalog of landscape images to try and find some inspiration.
I did have some ideas floating around. Wabi-sabi for example, the Japanese idea that invites us to accept and embrace the inevitability of aging and appreciate the beauty that can be found in imperfection and decay. So I sought images that evoked femininity, timelessness and beauty in things that are old.
Blue ice for example is very old ice. It has been compressed for millennia, squeezing the air out of it and turning it a fabulous blue. Some flowers wilt and decay with an elegance entirely different from the vitality of its youth, how female is that! Old trees whether as preserved skeletons such as those in Deadvlei, Namibia or the peeling bark of silver birch all clearly represent the ideas that I was looking for.
After much searching I settled on the concept of Skin. Old skin is so clearly identified with female aging. Much less attention is paid to aging male skin. And all flora, fauna and geology has skin or surface of some description. A common bond between humans and the rest the planet.
be
My drawings are a response to reading ‘Metaphors' a poem of nine lines by Sylvia Plath. Each line a different metaphor for how she felt about her pregnancy: nine possible images for me to draw.
Unlike me she did not allow herself to live long enough to experience old age.