Emma Bentley Fox

Dear Emma, 

Thank you for having me, for looking after me, taking me to see your show and talking me through your process. It’s a privilege to have seen your practice evolve, a privilege that’s second only to having you in my life as a friend and collaborator.

‘Confessions of a Party Mom’, your first solo show, carefully pulls together your documentary photographs of us ‘moms’ in Leeds. You show us, as wall sized prints, framed portraits and intimately displayed negatives. This variety leans into the different textures of memory and the fluidity of perception, sexuality and gender identity. You hold space for the unanswerable and undefinable. ‘Confessions of a Party Mom’ touches tenderly on beauty, friendship, pain and joy with a holistic nod to time passed and lives changed. 

You call the huge print of Courtney grabby, and I agree. She reaches up, eyes closed, lips parted, shining on the catwalk in a white Marilyn wig, pink eyeshadow, lips and tiara to match. The image consumes the entire wall, like we were in those, can’t take my eyes off the catwalk, bodies pulsing together, never want to be anywhere else, big euphoria moments. Pulled in, you notice five objects punctuating the image. Illuminated negatives are tucked inside five specially designed light boxes, as the feelings from those nights are tucked inside our hearts. You say “peeking in speaks to the intimacy and specialness of that moment in that space”. I think about all of the tenderness and fragility exchanged in that small part of the world we carved for ourselves; beyond the bright, loud aesthetic. Feelings beyond language. 

Peering into those boxes is an offering for the audience to go beyond the superficial. It is a way to draw them in and tell them they are wanted. I’ve never thought about “analogue depth” and the pixelating loss of detail when printing/digitising images from negatives. You talk about the “expansiveness of texture and depth in the negative” and I think about the place of possibility in those parties and infinite experiences of queerness, defying definition. Each box holds a narrative, with a different party unfolding within. One traces Kit’s iconic Jane McDonald performance when we took our audiences cruising last year. The inverted colours are alien belonging to an alternate reality, some parallel place, a utopia, another idea of how things could be. In their humble state, hung on the wall, the negatives give a glimpse at the richness of those nights. A depth which threatens the status quo; parties as political spaces to assemble and question. 

Time threads through the show. You talk about the immediacy of point and shoot photography during the haze of party chaos. Then the longer process of sending the film to be developed, waiting, and getting the negatives back. You bring the audience in on the brimming excitement of that first look. When you describe the archiving process you’ve done over the past year as “an act, a performance, a gesture of care”, I imagine you in your studio, concentrating, white gloved and absorbed for hours. You talk about the archive as a place that isn’t fixed, with no one reality. It is fluid, bending to different interpretations despite recorded details. I think about queerness, all the spaces between language, what can be found and lost in the gaps. 

The show flows into darker undercurrents; the crying, sharing and learning in friendships that have grown through grief, illness, pandemics, break ups and exploration of selves. You talk about the limitations of photography “you’re only seeing a glimpse, you don’t get the full picture”. We wonder together about the perception of Part Mom Society (PMS). Documenting the glitz, glam and laughs is important but so is everything layered in those moments. ‘Confessions of a Party Mom’ scrapes beneath the surface to show us, at times, using PMS as a way to escape realities and insecurities we didn’t want to deal with. I look at the red framed picture of Kit and I sitting in a takeaway, ratty wigs and mascara smudged down our cheeks. Kit looks into the camera, her fun pink wig, blue eyeshadow and tiara sickly sweet against her tilted, flat stare into the camera. We wanted to work hard and do well by our community, but this often meant working unhealthily and holding a great deal of responsibility. Our friendship at times became absorbed by PMS. 

Wild swimming gave us space to be with each other; sober, barefaced and in the stillness of the pandemic. Releasing in the currents, we began to find understand our bodies in new ways ‘shrugging off the wigs, the glitter and the glamour’ and unmasking other parts of our identities.There’s a really beautiful unveiling throughout the show, culminating with Kit, naked and floating on her back in a river. She smiles, her arms open wide and her skin mottled lime green by the enveloping water. You’re there, camera in hand, ready to catch her. The metallic quality of the aluminium on which she’s printed glistens in the light with a feel of reflective release. You say “I like that image for Kit because it’s not gendered, not sexualised, it’s just a human body - it’s just Kit”. Isn’t that where we all want to be really?

It felt right sitting on the stage at the back of Hyde Park Book Club with you and Kit, talking about how the fun, silliness and joy of PMS still runs through everything we do. As we sat, I thought about the proximity of the basement it all happened in, there beneath our feet. I like to think that some dust from our shoes, a rogue pair of eyelashes, a few diamantes, a dribble of buffet table cherry soda, a wiry hair from a tatty wig are tucked forever in the cracks of that space. An archive of us. 

Well done again on an amazing show and thank you for looking after our memories. 

All my love, 

Lil x

Lily Lavorato,

Party Mom, Party Mom Society