Highland Dress is a life-sized female dress sculpture composed of pink Ordnance Survey maps of the Scottish Highlands. This work is part of a series of life-size dresses constructed from antiquated maps and currency that relate specifically to aspects of British history. This particular dress is composed of Ordnance Survey maps of the Scottish Highlands, addressing the issue of English colonization and occupation of Scotland over 300 years.

Together with the pink colour, the imaged contours of the Scottish Highlands suggest bodily form.

‘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.’

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

Susan's ongoing series of Dress Sculptures crosses the boundaries between art, fashion & craft, questioning our need to separate and categorise. Their beautiful, finely crafted details and tactility draw the viewer in, and then they can read the deeper, layered conceptual questioning in the works.

Exhibitions:

Collaroral Drawing 6, APT Gallery, London 2026 Curated by Bella Easton

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 Children's 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

The Creative Compass Royal Geographical Society & IBG London 2010

Paper Tiger One Canada Square, Canary Wharf 2008

Publications:

Susan Stockwell's Map Dresses Trendland, Cyril Foiret 2025

The First Cut Catalogue for exhibition Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester 2013

Sculpture at Canary Wharf: a Decade of Exhibitions 2011

Susan Stockwell: Economy, Dresses and Maps - Art Cartography

Mappamundi_Art_Cartographie Guillaume Monsaingeon, see p. 26/27

Mappamundi in Toulon - Terra Cognita

The Creative Compass Catalogue, Royal Geographical Society

Mapping Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art, Sarah Tanguy, for the Katonah Museum of Art