Gossip is something often described with words such as ‘idle’, ‘Malicious’, ‘Immature’. Yet we cannot escape it. It has a huge impact on how we live our lives and form relationships. In this work I make something normally kept secret and, if anything, hidden (treated almost as sin). I present it blatantly in front of the viewer. I have created a scene, inspired by a stock images search for the word, ‘Gossip’. My research and project have been to look for the benefits of gossip and why it is so vital to being human

The installation includes sculptures and a photographic print on fabric, as well as this there is a sound piece which plays recordings of gossip constantly.

Here is a section from my dissertation, “Weak Minds Discuss People”: Reframing Gossip as Necessity

Using the Getty Images search tool, I typed in ‘Gossip’ in anticipation of the kind of images it would generate. It gave me a clear idea of how gossip is percieved.  I saw a selection of staged images. The majority depicted women whispering in casual settings . Men appeared sometimes, but if they did, they were either businessmen who appeared serious, or were described as ‘gay’. The written descriptions that captioned these images also contained meaning. Some were detailed and told the backstory and feelings of the characters in frame; others were simpler: ‘Two women whispering secrets’. The searches were evidence of something I had suspected: gossip is encoded with a kind of judgmentalism. It is rendered naive, as mainly a woman’s activity, and somewhat immoral.