One Thoresby Street and New Midland Group (NMG) are pleased to present Bias Cut, an exhibition of new work by Rebecca Jarman. Jarman is the recipient of NMG’s UoL Production Bursary, given in partnership with University of Lincoln. Offered exclusively to undergraduates from University of Lincoln’s BA (Hons) Fine Art who graduated in 2020/21, this opportunity was for an emerging artist affected by the Covid-19 pandemic providing them with the tools and resources to produce and exhibit work within a NMG partner venue.

Working in a variety of media including drawing, installation, and sound, Jarman’s practice centers on how art can act as a conduit for social change.

Jarman often takes an analytic and research based approach and has taken Caroline Criado-Perez’s ‘One-Size-Fits-Men’* discussion as a starting point for this project. Perez notes that ‘women have, on average, smaller hands than men’ but very few manufacturers cater to this. Similarly, women’s clothes often have significantly smaller pockets or lack pockets completely. Women are often encumbered more than men and thus have to change their behaviour to fit their surroundings, rather than the design of their surroundings adapting to them. This is highlighted in Jarman’s denim-tapestry work, where we are able to see the significant difference in size of a man’s jean pocket to a woman’s. Often, design marginalises women’s bodies, meaning that both literally and figuratively, women don’t fit in.The unconscious biases that lie behind these misogynistic designs, and the effect they have on the everyday experience of women are further emphasised by the abject, grotesque sculptures in the exhibition.

“I met Criado-Perez in October 2021 and asked her how she imagined her work would translate into art, her response was ‘I don’t know you’re the artist, you tell me’. This exhibition is my personal response to not only her ideas, but my experience living as a woman in the modern, man-made world.” -Rebecca Jarman.

*Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men 2019.

Supported by the NMG Development Programme, an Arts Council England Funded project delivered through New Midland Group, a consortium of three artist-led organisations located in Nottingham: Backlit, One Thoresby Street and Primary. We work together to foster the profile and sustainability of contemporary visual arts in the Midlands.