Projects

Lucid Dreams collaboration at the PERSONAL STRUCTURES exhibition at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy, 20 April 2024 – 24 November 2024

AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM LONDON

Please join us at the Pillow Talk Literary Salon where ideas and shared stories are explored through the Nothing Less! exhibition and weaved through the Pillow Talk installation that delivers a still point of study at the heart of a lush aesthetic experience. Working up a flow of feminist stories that reach through visitors’ senses of texture and space, the Salon offers a space for exchange and conversation.

Pillow Talk – conversations with women

**NOTHING LESS! 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage**
Austrian Cultural Forum 28 Rutland Gate London SW7 1PQ

10 October 2019 to 31 January 2020

I am very proud to announce the ISBN book I have been working on for two years, Pillow Talk – conversations with women has been published on 24 September 2019. Thanks and credit go to so many people that contributed and helped make the book come to fruition – Althea Greenan, Moira Jarvis, Kim Thornton, Jasmine Pradissitto, Julie Bennett, Riverside Printers. Pillow Talk is dedicated to Moira Jarvis, who sadly passed away in 2018.

Pillow Talk is a collaborative project between South London Women Artists (SLWA) and the Women’s Art Library (WAL) Goldsmiths, University of London. Documenting the journey Pillow Talk has taken between 2016-2018, this book contains texts and conversations outlining the various aims, themes and aspirations of the project and is beautifully illustrated throughout. First exhibited at Brixton East 1871, Pillow Talk was invited to exhibit by TEDxUCLWomen at University College London Pavilion, BBC 100 Women at BBC Broadcasting House and took part in the VOTE 100 Celebrations at Uniqlo Tate Lates at Tate Modern.

Pillow Talk works up a rich flow of stories delivering a still point of study at the heart of a lush aesthetic experience. Fifty-nine artwork pillows offer a place to sit, read and have conversations – at its heart are various publications and ephemera selected by the Women’s Art Library in response to the themes of the pillows. Nomadic in nature, Pillow Talk contributes to a collective multi-layered memory of women’s art history and the achievements of contemporary women artists.

Pillow Talk pillows in the shape of the female symbol by Melissa Budasz
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Pillow Talk as a visual mind map by Melissa Budasz

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Sphinx Pin-Up (2018) by Melissa Budasz

HEROINES IDOLS AND INFLUENCES
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Pillow Talk installation at Tate Modern (2018)

Pillow Talk (2018) at Uniqlo Tate Lates, Tate Modern, Bankside, London

The Four Chambered Heart is my homage to the writer Anaïs Nin, who has helped to shape my thinking for years. The heroine of the novel is Nin’s alter ego, Djuna, that documents her emotions and passions, her thoughts and decisions and her doubts and sacrifices. Nin used the experiences of her own life to weave her novels and was able to integrate her femininity with her independence and wrote intimate and psychologically perceptive novels on the nature of women. These complex threads unite all women, making the feminine principle of love and sexuality more visible and conscious.