Expose

Across her practice, Loretta Campbell has used each body of work to mark a stage of her life, from reflecting on childhood to confronting the realities of the present through experiences of hair loss and menopause. In Expose, she turns to the head as a site where history, faith, and the body converge. It is our crown, carrying meaning and weight that often go unnoticed until something changes.

This body of work emerged from Campbell's own experience of traumatic hair loss during menopause and from recognising how profoundly confidence, identity, and self-expression can become entwined with something so vulnerable to change. Yet the head has always held narratives that extend far beyond individual lives.

Across cultures, histories, and faith traditions, hair has long been a powerful symbol of identity, spirituality, resilience, and resistance. Biblical passages, including Leviticus 21:5 and the story of Samson and Delilah, speak to its sacred significance. The uncut locks of the Rastafarian faith embody spiritual devotion and cultural identity, while during slavery, intricately braided hairstyles were used to encode escape routes, transforming hair into a tool of survival, communication, and hope. The physical changes hair undergoes through childbirth, ageing, illness, and menopause likewise mirror the cycles of loss, renewal, concealment, and transformation that shape our lives.

These themes unfold through etching, printmaking, embroidery, and the application of gold paint. Words printed directly onto fabric, including I am God's gift and I am a child of God, appear as quiet affirmations of dignity, worth, and belonging. Plastic recurs throughout the work as both material and metaphor. It conceals while revealing, trapping what lies beneath while allowing light to pass through, much like memory itself. Recycled materials are dismantled, reshaped, and reformed, reflecting not only the ways Campbell has perceived others but also her ongoing process of questioning, rebuilding, and reclaiming her own identity.

Expose invites viewers to reconsider the symbolic significance of the head and hair, not merely as physical features but as vessels of memory, faith, survival, transformation, and hope. Through the deeply personal, Campbell creates a space for reflection on a shared human experience, asking how we carry loss, how we reconstruct identity, and how vulnerability can become a source of resilience.