STATEMENT
Hermes Baby, returns to themes persistent in Bailey's art over the last decade, but manifests an alternative aesthetic. While still clearly reverential to the waning lure of paper and script in an monotonously digitized age (2 Willow Road 2003; Hours of Devotion 2007) and to those powerfully unstereotypical precursors to conventional feminism such as Lee Miller (Postcript 2005; About Face 2005), Hermes Baby subverts the process of image-making that Bailey has hitherto largely adhered to. Here rather than simply shooting the edges of books or letters to invoke a natural nostalgia for the passing of the more traditional forms of the human dissemination of information, she has created from 35mm slide transparencies a series of what she terms “white handkerchiefs”, adorned with text and presented in multiples in spare white boxframes. A long way from the large format digital prints of previous series, she has handprinted using traditional darkroom techniques these monochromatic text flags onto unexposed vintage Bromide paper. When left to dry, the small slips of paper curl naturally, their sculpted edges somehow beckoning. For the first time in Bailey’s work, subject has become object.
Hermes Baby, returns to themes persistent in Bailey's art over the last decade, but manifests an alternative aesthetic. While still clearly reverential to the waning lure of paper and script in an monotonously digitized age (2 Willow Road 2003; Hours of Devotion 2007) and to those powerfully unstereotypical precursors to conventional feminism such as Lee Miller (Postcript 2005; About Face 2005), Hermes Baby subverts the process of image-making that Bailey has hitherto largely adhered to. Here rather than simply shooting the edges of books or letters to invoke a natural nostalgia for the passing of the more traditional forms of the human dissemination of information, she has created from 35mm slide transparencies a series of what she terms “white handkerchiefs”, adorned with text and presented in multiples in spare white boxframes. A long way from the large format digital prints of previous series, she has handprinted using traditional darkroom techniques these monochromatic text flags onto unexposed vintage Bromide paper. When left to dry, the small slips of paper curl naturally, their sculpted edges somehow beckoning. For the first time in Bailey’s work, subject has become object.
All artwork and images © Veronica Bailey 2026.
