Zoë Buckman: NOMI

Together with short phrases of text, Buckman's new flat textile works incorporate figurative imagery for the first time, to explore the experience of womanhood through multiple, fragmentary perspectives. By using vintage fabrics - tea towels, table runners and handkerchiefs - Buckman also incorporates their history. The creases, marks and stains point to the experience of their previous owners - women who used this cloths to mop up spills, but also to decorate the home. These short phrases appear with little context, leaving the viewer to their own interpretation. Uncertainty of meaning, explored throughout this new body of work, is further reflected in Buckman's loosely rendered female forms. In she kicks stones out of the path, women dancing or raising their hands in prayer are embroidered onto a cream tea towel decorated with blue cornflowers. The artist depicts each figure in outline only, leaving areas incomplete and trailing threads that hang loosely in front of and behind the images.

New collaged compositions on paper draw on Buckman's personal experience of trauma and healing. Addressing vulnerability and confinement - feelings exacerbated and now familiar to all during the pandemic - the artist finds hope in transformation. The image of twin circular forms reoccurs throughout this body of work, a symbol influenced by the artist's undergoing EMDR, a form of trauma therapy that accesses the left and right-hand sides of the brain alternately. This process is viscerally represented with delicate lace doilies, layered, blotted with ink, or joined together with dark, dense mohair thread. Making oblique reference psychological and physical wounding, the artist's emotive choice of materials points to violence within the domestic sphere and harmful conceptions of virginity.

Language continues to be a key element of Buckman's practice. Appropriating text from 'show me your bruises then', a free flowing poem the artist has been developing since 2018, Buckman presents an intimate and personal voice. Words from this text appear in her work's titles, as well as embroided or handwritten onto the works themselves. Whilst these short phrases punctuate this body of work with the artist's voice, each appears with little context. Underlining the ambiguity of meaning assigned to familiar words, Buckman leaves the viewer to their own interpretation. Short phrases such as 'banter' (how many bodies have been swallowed by banter) and 'you're walking fine to me' (kissing my teeth), expose how easily words may project humour or violence. Longer texts, Things she'll never forget and he pitched digits, present a lyrical snapshot, hinting at a wider narrative.