Jess Blandford

I’ve been making repetitive line drawings for over a decade. They are each hand-drawn with ink on paper and are quiet meditations on the invisible work that so many women do to keep homes and families running smoothly.

The drawings are simple. They are a repetition of individual lines. Each line is similar but unique. Like the work involved in domestic life, they are mundane, familiar, often boring. But for me something interesting happens in repeating the act over and over. Like the never-ending task of wiping (surfaces, hands, bums, tears…), the act of repetition, performed day-in-day- out, creates a kind of intimacy. The cumulative effect of a simple task done (mostly!) with patience turns the ordinary into something valuable and unique.

postcard size colour studies in oil paint on gesso boards, made in 2022

This series of abstract paintings are a playful exploration of domestic space. They are influenced by descriptions of the ambivalent mother figure Baba Yaga’s unstable hut in russian folktales. Hidden layers of colour suggest invisible repetitive work. These abstract structures don’t hold together logically. They are wonky, they float away or tumble open. Attempts to tether them seem perhaps to be futile.

I’m delighted to have this work represented by ForgeArt a contemporary online gallery that showcases emerging and established artists that challenge, stimulate, inspire and tell a story. Please see their website if you are interested in buying one of these works.

This work was made in collaboration with Joe Morris as part of the Market Estate project in 2010.  

The Market Estate Project invited 75 artists and designers to work alongside residents of a soon to be demolished housing estate, in Islington London, transforming the flats left behind, corridors, staircases and building facades and transform the building into a creative celebration, a colourful and rich last memory of the estate.

More than 2500 people attended the event on 6 March 2010 which invited the public to explore the art works created on site, just before the demolition bulldozers move in.

Our work, Fluorescent Yellow Room, transformed one of the rooms in a  flat into an immersive colour-saturated evocation of a 1960s living room. Using period furniture and domestic objects we painted every surface in the room fluorescent yellow.   This colour was chosen for both its overly hopeful brilliance and its association with the nuclear age and warning.  Its antiseptic nature creating the feeling of an optimistic toxicity.  We wanted to reflect the luminous idealism of the 1960s utopian plan for the site, but create an unnervingly flat immersive experience.  

It was on show for only 1 day before the bulldozers arrived and the entire site was demolished. 

[photos by Tom Willcocks]

[kindly supported by HMG paints]

Managed Retreat (2009) is a split screen film exploring the landscape and inhabitants of Eastern Bavants, a small stretch of coastline in Suffolk which has extreme coastal erosion.  It is a meditation on the shifting boundaries of land and water; the vulnerability of a particular house which was at the time on the very edge; and the obsession of one man to find a way to prevent it being taken by the sea.  It was shown inside a full size recreation of a beach hut.

Untitled, 2012
Digital prints on tracing paper (29.5 x 21cm).  Multiple layers.

These prints combine 18th century engravings of coral with text from a similar period that warns women of the activities they should avoid in pregnancy, to ensure that they don't birth a monstrous child.  This includes: 

"The Pleasure of Looking at and Contemplating, even for a long time, a picture, or Whatsoever is delightful to the Fancy".

and

"A strong Longing for something in particular, in which Desire the mother is either gratified or disappointed".

The images of coral were chosen as coral was a matter with indeterminate properties.  For many centuries there was dispute as to whether it was a plant, stone or animal.  These mysterious objects with their shifting boundaries of state and uncertain structures are documented with a scientific precision.  But in multiple layers they make combinations that evoke uncanny female body parts, exaggerating a sense of uncertainty and the unknown.

This work was shown at the Printmaking Interim Show at the RCA in May 2012 (when I was 8 month pregnant).

This series of houses made from paper (or balsa wood and paper) were made while I was a student at Camberwell College of Art (2006).

They were recreations of homes I have lived in and were 'demolished' in a performance using domestic implements (washing up bowl, bread knife, iron).

Acrylic on Canvas
12.5 x 12.5cm

This site-specific installation was made for the exhibition 'I took the lift to the 6th floor' of printmaking students at the RCA.  It was shown in March 2012 at CGP Gallery.

A series of paintings made while living in New York in response to navigating an unfamiliar culture with a newborn baby and a toddler.

Acrylic on board (7.5cm x 10.5cm)

They were shown at the Goldsmith's Women's Art Library as part of the Procreate Project's photozine exhibition.

A series of collages using dolls house wallpapers.

Mixed media on paper, 2018
Framed 32 x 42cm

Pen and ink, charcoal and gouache on brown paper

2013

14.8 x 21cm

A series of prints and paint on photocopies working with utopian post-war architecture.

Still life paintings.  

Acrylic on canvas pantings and ink on paper drawings of domestic objects stuffed into tights.

2006-7

These prints were drawn on top of with sketches of failed drawings (drawings of the scrunched up paper).  The sleek promise of productivity and style in the 1960s advertisements for office furniture juxtaposed with my own failures rendered in childlike scribbles with yellow crayon and paint.