The title of the exhibition, which borrows from the proverb \u2018you catch more flies with honey than vinegar\u2019 that Gregory\u2019s mother would often repeat, reflects this visual seduction that the artist employs. Sometimes the artist\u2019s interest in beauty, a means of creating a sensuous experience, is more oblique and can be found in the laborious, embodied and physical experience of creating an image through cyanotypes, salt-printing or hours in the darkroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been really interested in the materiality of photography, and thinking of photographs as objects rather than just as images, because the substance the image exists on can be just as crucial as the image itself. When I\u2019m using Victorian processes, such as with my series of cyanotypes or using Liquid Light, I have to use different types of paper which imbue the photographs with different emotions and feelings that make them into these really beautiful and precious objects,\u201d Gregory says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other times, beauty and femininity, which are often defined by racialised and gendered ideas, become the site of analysis. This is especially apparent in earlier work, such as Autoportrait (1990), Cinderella Tours Europe (1997\u20132001) and Objects of Beauty (1992\u20131995). In one of her most recognisable series, Autoportrait, which consists of nine black and white self-portraits, Gregory poses for the camera with intention; sometimes peering over her shoulder, looking directly at the lens or with only her earlobe adorned with a dangly pendant earring in frame. This series is Gregory\u2019s response to the lack of Black women in British fashion imagery, which she surrounded herself with growing up, and her desire to see someone like herself in the glossy pages of a magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Gregory, who came of age as a Black woman in Buckinghamshire in the 1970s, surrounded by white families, fashion and beauty were not trite preoccupations but a place to dream and discover her sense of self. \u201cYoung people are obsessed with fashion and style because they want attention and to be noticed, but conform to some extent so they do not stand out massively,\u201d Gregory says. \u201cI spent most of my youth utterly obsessed with those magazines and with fashion. So much of my work is interested in these themes of fashioning oneself and how that plays with identity and even notions of race.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This longstanding interest materialises in projects such as Girl Thing (2002\u20132004), a row of pearls, silk scarves, bathing suits and chiffon blouses are displayed as cyanotypes encased in a glass-like surface, reflecting, in this case literally, how femininity is a performance bound up in objects rather than something innate. In the gallery space upstairs, Gregory\u2019s The Blonde (1997-2010) \u2013 a 13-year project which includes a film from 1998 titled The Fairest, images of blonde subjects photographed by the artist and a vitrine with photographs of the artist hawking blonde memorabilia at Brixton Market, amongst other ephemera \u2013 continues this exploration of how the self is constructed and uses the archetypal figure of the blonde to question racialised ideas of beauty. Gregory says she wanted to \u201ccollide the world of politics and fashion together\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n The latter half of the show introduces the audience to a new turn in Gregory\u2019s work and the artist\u2019s interest in performance, sound and moving image. These later works, which emerged from years of research, concern indigeneity in South Africa and the loss of language as well as a more personal exploration of the fractured relationship between the Caribbean and Europe. In Seeds of Empire (2021), for instance, Gregory uses moving image, text and sound produced in collaboration with the composer, Philip Miller, to problematise the exploration and findings by scientists and collectors that constituted the foundation of museums such as The British Museum.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSeeds of Empire was at least ten years in the making, and it started with me being invited to be a part of a research group that was looking at the collections in the British Museum, British Library and the Natural History Museum. There was this expectation that I would produce work quickly, but I was dealing with something that doesn\u2019t just affect people of colour but all of us, because these collections reveal so much about colonialism and who colonised these spaces. There is no black and white answer to it,\u201d Gregory explains.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of time, reading, reflection, speaking and thinking goes into approaching something like that, but when it does come together, it is truly wonderful. I asked Philip Miller to collaborate with me on the project and did all the interviews remotely with people who\u2019d experienced coming into the UK from Jamaica and based it on just two pieces of text from Hans Sloane\u2019s voyage to Jamaica, which both Philip and I knew inside out because we\u2019d spent years and years reading that text.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Gregory\u2019s sustained engagement and deep understanding of the people she collaborates with and their histories are crucial to understanding her work, which is poetic, beautiful, and even minimalistic at first glance, yet attempts to engage with decades-long discourses on race and gender as well as the more haunting, problematic history of the British Empire.<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"Catching](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/466151.jpg\")
Bridge of Miracles, Venice from the series \u2018Cinderella Tours Europe\u2019 1997 \u2013 2001\u00a9 Joy Gregory\/ Courtesy the artist & DACS<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Schinus Molle (California Pepper Tree) from the series \u2018The Invisible Life Force of Plants\u2019 2020\u00a9 Joy Gregory\/ Courtesy the artist & DACS<\/p>\n
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Eyelashes from the series \u2018Objects of Beauty\u2019 1992 \u2013 1995\u00a9 Joy Gregory\/ Courtesy the artist & DACS<\/p>\n