About

Hayley Field and Jacqueline Utley are artists working collaboratively as Obscure Secure. Our practice based research explores twentieth century women artists in collections from a position of care as fellow artists.

How we work

As Obscure Secure we aim to demonstrate the creative impact of historical women artists on our contemporary practice, engaging the public, peers, and institutions in issues around representation and equality.

Our individual responses to artist Kathleen Walne (1915-2011)

“Kathleen’s focus on pattern and textiles is an inspiration – making space into pattern. Where she draws and paints with freedom and confidence, I now draw with my paintings – finding freshness through re-configuration, new narratives and dynamic relationships.”
Hayley Field

“your intuitive use of pattern and colour, the process of looking closely / slowly at your work….. examining archive material over time has provided an intimate understanding of the wider issues around the lack of visibility of women artists…..You have very much become a guiding presence in my studio practice…”
Extracts from a thank you note from Jacqueline Utley to Kathleen Walne

As Obscure Secure we learn from and share stories of marginalised women artists through collaboration, openness of processes and by challenging hierarchies.

We asked visitors to our residency at Towner Eastbourne in 2022 a series of questions about their ideas on public collections and their experience of other people’s creativity in their lives.

Examples of people’s responses to our questions.

“My neighbour and art teacher… lived next door to us. She worked as a textile designer to pay the bills but she was an oil painter. She would have a tiny studio in the corner of her dining room.. She would devise the art classes for us children of what she was working on… I was an extension of her, her knowledge, her skill, her tutelage, her creative expression.”

“My Grandma… was a painter. For a job she painted for advertisements, billboards etc. She was never encouraged to go to art school, so essentially taught herself and tried to do it while raising kids. I think sadly this unfulfilled creativity / potential made her depressed and frustrated for large chunks of her life.”

“Decisions have been made based on traditional patriarchal views. Mostly dominated by the privileged classes about what ‘culture’ is. Traditional institutions – academia and elitism!”

“… Why are works collected, to what end? Value, posterity, legacy, access, endowment? What does having a collection afford?”

 

A brief history of Obscure Secure

Obscure Secure is a collaborative project initiated by artists Claudia Böse, Hayley Field and Jacqueline Utley.

A meeting at Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, in 2013 brought an opportunity to explore work made by women in Ipswich Borough Council’s collection. Our following project, Red Studio Enquiry, focused on Mary Potter (1900-1981) and enabled us to work in residence in Potter’s home and studio (part of Britten Pears Arts) before sharing findings at a symposium event (2017).

In 2017 Hayley Field and Jacqueline Utley started researching the artist Kathleen Walne (1915-2011), whose work is included in the collections of Ipswich Borough Council, Towner Eastbourne, Salford Museum and Art Gallery and Auckland Art Gallery.

Our residency at Towner Eastbourne during the Wertheim exhibitions A Life in Art: Lucy Wertheim and Reuniting the Twenties Group (June – September 2022), shared our research processes and engaged visitors to critically consider public collections. Our publication, Listening to Kathleen Walne, was launched in September 2022 at a discussion event focusing on issues around gender imbalance and the underrepresentation of women artists in collections.

Our projects have been funded by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants.

 

The name Obscure Secure was taken from one of The Hawstead Panels at Christchurch Mansion, most available writing about the panels say they were probably painted by Lady Drury in 1610.  The panel ‘Obscure Secure’ has an image of a bear in a cave with the text beneath it. We decided to use this title because the words and image resonated with working with collections, where work is often hidden but kept safe.

 

Our Work