A Domestic Scene in Chorlton

This quilt was originally commissioned for A Tall Order! exhibition curated by Derek Horton and Alice Correia (until May 2023). The exhibition looks back at the 1980s (and early 1990s) of curation at Touchstones that platformed women, black, queer and working class artists led by exhibition officer Jill Morgan.

The quilt was created in response to archival research Rachael Field’s 1991 groundbreaking solo show Real Lemon: Broadening Out; through both archival research and conversations with Rachael. Jill Morgan said of the exhibition in the catalogue “I hope that this exhibition at Rochdale will form a significant part of the feminist re-shaping of art history in the 1990s” (1991).

The quilted artwork is a direct reference to Rachael’s own painting Domestic Scene Whalley Range, offering an intergenerational mirroring of an intimate, lesbian domestic scene. Rachael depicted herself and her partner at the time at their home, in Whalley Range – my re-visioning offers a me keeping my partner Talin Aghanian company in the bathroom while she brushing her teeth at our home in Chorlton. Our guinea pig Baby sits in my lap.

In the original installation, the quilt double sided quilt was hung above a bath belonging to Rochdale industrialist John Bright and to the side a black fossil table containing archive materials. The quilt is an act of intergenerational solidarity and artistic intimacy, and became the beginning of a wonderful friendship. It is a celebration of the lesbian every day, and an insistence on the radical potentiality of sapphic joy.