Charlotte Warne Thomas

Career gap (Interrupted), 2025

Digital print on vinyl (adhered to double doors of the institution)
152cm x 224cm; Dimensions variable

Charlotte Warne Thomas is an artist, lecturer, and mother based in Southeast London. She is completing a practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Kingston University, funded by Techne (AHRC). Her work is often based on photography, and includes performance, sculpture, collage, AV, and text, which she harvests from a wide range of sources including advertising and social media. Her practice explores the hierarchies of value placed on different kinds of labour, with a particular focus on invisible labour, both in terms of mothers' unpaid familial care and that of women artists, whose work continues to be overlooked and undervalued by a market-oriented art world. The way these two inequalities intersect, and especially the role of ‘love’ in both unpaid domestic care and (women) artists’ work in relation to the concepts of reproductive labour and emotional labour is a core concern.

Career gap (Interrupted) is positioned on double-doors such that it is disturbed every time someone passes through, reflecting on the constant state of being interrupted when caring for children. The text refers to the career gap women face when taking time out of paid work to raise children, and/or working part time, which limits their earning potential, compounding poverty in old age due to lower pensions (aka the motherhood penalty). It also hints at the pernicious fashion for having a 'thigh gap', and the toxic expectations for women to 'bounce back' and lose weight after pregnancy and birth. See also https://vimeo.com/1091495382 

charlottewarnethomas.com