Glass, books, book pages, punched card, 400 (h) x  660 (w) x 490 (d) mm, 2012.

‘The Maidens’ is a visual essay made from books propped up to display the black and white photographs within them. One book is opened to show ‘The Merry Maidens’; an iron-age stone circle in Penwith. The other two photographs are aligned so as to connect a group of Morris dancers with a different group of merry maidens; the women from Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp performing a mass group action called ‘Embrace the Base’ in December 1982. Thirty thousand women came together to make a circle of joined hands around the US base at Greenham. The Christian explanation of the stone circle was that dancing women were punished for their transgression by being turned to stone. For me, this connected with the circle of women at Greenham who were transgressing social mores about a woman’s proper place being in the home. Looking at the images my mind ran back and forth through ideas about the land, ownership, politics, power and photography.