An Exhibition by Linda Fryer

These Adulterated Dolls, were originally all found in skips and bins. As jetsam, many have a particular resonance with the growing number of children who have been cast out of the state education system in order to stabilise schools’ league tables and to prevent bad Ofsted reports.

Others in the collection stand for those traumatised to the point of pathology by the collective ignorance of both teachers and parents.

Failure to grasp the true nature of the human being has meant that ranks of adults have literally adulterated the beings of the children in their care, rendering them mutant and as such ill equipped to deal with the rigours of life here on earth. At least, this is the story for a vast number of ‘the adulterated.’ These are personified by the caged dolls: creatures held captive and at the mercy of their captors.

Those who stand freely are the mutants who have benefitted from their transformations: their path is by no means smooth but they have untried faculties and talents.

All of the dolls have been enhanced by a huge range of garbage items: cosmetic, confectionary and laundry containers, coloured fruit netting, drinking straws and rusty jugs.

The Elemental Collection are talismanic nature spirits, constructed exclusively from locally sourced reeds and herbs, and framed in North of England tie-dyed muslin and linen and decorated with ethnic beads from tribal peoples.

The uprightness of the reeds emphasizes the growing disapproval and distress of the Beings of Nature when beholding Human disregard for Earth.