Highland Dress

2020

Highland Dress is an empty life-sized female dress sculpture composed of ordinance survey maps of the Scottish Highlands and cloth, stitched and glued together.

Using military maps to create a woman’s dress sends a double message of war and politics being dominated by men in Western history. This is particularly relevant in today's precrious world!

‘Stockwell delivers a visual blow to English colonization and occupation of Scotland over 300 years. Using military maps to create a woman’s dress sends a double message of war and politics being dominated by men in Western history. The strongly posed representation of feminism battles against male denial of power and suggests that men can only settle disputes through wars.’

Quoted from Review of Mapping: memory and Motion in Contemporary Art at Katonah Museum of Art - International Journal of Multicultural Education, Vol.12/no 2.Page 3. 2012.

Part of the ongoing series of Dress Sculptures that Stockwell began making in the early 2000's

This work was remade in 2020 to make it more sustainable and transportable.

Exhibitions:

Matisse and Contemporary Paper Art Rheged Art Centre, Penrith UK 2022

Artist In Residence Exhibited Works, Pinsent Masons, London UK 2020-2022

If you Lived Here you'd be Home Childens Museum New York USA 2016

Mind the Map GALLERIE F 15 Punkt Ø NORWAY 2014

First Cut Manchester Art Gallery & Platt Hall Museum of Costume 2013

Paper Tiger One Canada Square, Canary Wharf 2008

Publications:

Susan Stockwell's Map Dresse's Trendland, Cyril Foiret 2025

The First Cut Catalogue for exhibitioon Cornerhouse publications Manchester 2013