A Labouring Life - RSA Version Galore

A Labouring Life (March 2024) was created for the Royal Scottish Academy’s Version Galore exhibition, responding to works from the RSA collection. The piece reinterprets Patrick Hennessy’s A Still Life (1939), using the still life format to explore labour, place and civic identity.

Developed through research at the Granton Archives, the work draws on Hennessy’s sense of civic pride, reframing it through my hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne. Familiar cultural markers, including Greggs, Newcastle Brown Ale and references to the blue collar workforce, reflect a city shaped by industry and labour.

The final piece took the form of an A2 Hahnemühle Gloss Rag print mounted onto stainless steel sourced from Newcastle, grounding the work in the material history it references. Digital manipulation and composition were used to translate the original painting into a contemporary context.

Exhibited alongside Hennessy’s original at the Royal Scottish Academy, the work formed a direct dialogue between past and present. It marked an important point in my practice, expanding how I work with humour, materiality and cultural reference.