Exploring craft as storytelling and a force for transformation, Marr creates embroidered dusters to challenge domestic gender expectations.
Vanessa is an academic, artist and designer based in East Sussex, England. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and is currently a Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton. Her work is underpinned by visual design-theory and process yet embraces an intuitive and physical approach that facilitates self-authorship, which she explores predominantly through hand-stitch and creative writing. She is drawn to cloth as a medium that holds the legacy of so-called women’s work and its potential for subversion and quiet activism. She is best known for her hand embroidered dusting cloths, which form part of an ongoing collaborative arts project ‘Women & Domesticity—What’s your Perspective?’ that invites embroidered statements on this theme. Her work has been exhibited and presented widely in academic, community and arts contexts in the UK. Vanessa regularly participates in collaborative, creative and research projects, and never stops learning, making and writing.
