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Artworks
Jo Spence
Only when I got to fifty did I realise I was Cinderella (06), 1984Artist laminated exhibition panel32.5 x 32.5 cms 12 12/16 x 12 12/16 insSeries: 3. Fairy Tales and Photography... or, Another Look at Cinderella (1981-84)11972Provenance
Jo Spence Memorial Archive
Richard Saltoun Gallery, LondonExhibitions
Jo Spence: Review of Work 1950-1985, Camerawork Gallery, London, 1985. Exhibition toured by Cockpit Gallery:
Dales Brewery, March - April, 1985,
Ffotogallery, Cardiff, July 1985
Battersea Arts Centre, Sept 1985
Triangle Gallery, Birmingham, October 1985
The Cockpit Gallery, Holborn, London, January 1986
Phototherapy Road Show, Photographers' Gallery, 1985
Missing Persons / Damaged Lives. Jo Spence in collaboration with Rosy Martin, Ya'acov Khan, David Roberts and Tim Sheard, Leeds City Art Galleries, 1991.
Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead: Techniques of Becoming'at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 16 October 2021 - 2 January 2022
Jo Spence : from Fairy Tales to Phototherapy. Photographs from the Hyman Collection, Arnolfini Bristol, (18th May 2020 - 20th June 2021) (this print)
'Jo Spence. Fairytales and Photography' at the Centre for British Photography (26 January - 28 May 2023)
Jo Spence: A Woman’s Place? at Belfast Exposed in Collaboration with the Centre for British Photography. 7th October 2024 – 21st December 2024
One of a set of rare artist-laminated exhibition panels that Jo Spence made in collaboration with Rosy Martin and Terry Dennett. The colour works from this series were mainly made...One of a set of rare artist-laminated exhibition panels that Jo Spence made in collaboration with Rosy Martin and Terry Dennett. The colour works from this series were mainly made in collaboration with Rosy Martin and the black and white work in collaboration with Terry Dennett.
Rosy Martin has written of this series of laminated panels: "The individual photos did have their own titles. Jo is using work made in photo-therapy sessions with me in another context - to tell another set of stories."
This depiction of Spence as a fairy was taken at her fiftieth birthday. Photographer unknown.
Inscribed:
"I want to be happy.
Can I transfom others? Does it really matter?
I can transform myself"
The present photograph of Spence as a fairy was not taken in a phototherapy session but at her fiftieth birthday party. This women-only party was Cinderella-themed and Spence dressed as the fairy godmother. Two years earlier Spence had written her undergraduate thesis exploring Cinderella entitled "Fairy Tales and Photography... or, another look at Cinderella". Spence's fiftieth birthday party and her own identification with Cinderella helps explain the title of this series: "Only when I got to fifty did I realise I was Cinderella".
These laminated panels, from 1984, build from this engagement with Cinderella and also look forward to the centrality of health issues in her later work.
We are grateful to Rosy Martin for her assistance in cataloguing this work.
