Orphans (Performance: Rodin Museum, Paris)

Orphans and Unknown Girls is a body of work depicting the bows and ribbons, that adorn the hair of orphans and unknown girls that the painter, Gwen John (1876 -1939) had drawn during mass at the local church in Meudon. Painted in watercolour using vermillion, the works explore the anonymity of the unidentified young girls whilst purposefully reworking the bows in red, contemplating the decorative and frivolous nature of the bow and its function of constraining the hair. In a notebook John wrote an intriguing entry: