Kim Thornton

Kim Thornton is a photographer and filmmaker whose work examines domestic space as both comfort and captivity. The Assumption — a large-format archival print made during the pandemic — shows a figure in a cloak fashioned from striped dishcloths, poised on a windowsill at the threshold of inside and out. Created in response to the extraordinary labour of mothers during lockdown, the image holds its ambiguity carefully: the figure could be about to perform an astonishing feat, or making a desperate bid to escape. Her second work, The Long Silence, is a 4:49 film drawing on the historical secret language of fans — used by women in the eighteenth century to communicate beyond the constraints of social etiquette — adapted to reflect contemporary silencing.