Jade Radley

I am a graduate from a BA (Hons) Theatre Degree, at The University of Chichester, I have 3 years  of experience in freelance photography outside of studying. During my time at university, in the heat of Covid 19, I created the live-art exploration ’The Flowerbed’ which focuses on toxic femininity and the feeling of being consumed with society’s vision of what a woman should be. 

Growing up in Essex, I have found my relationship to ‘girliness’ and being ‘girly’ to be a conflicting and very challenging expectation that I threw onto myself. I used my body as a canvas for my work and the application of real and fake flowers as a tool to be engulfed by the hyper feminine, floral symbol. It can embody anything, like that feeling of having to wear a dress to an event when you really don’t want to, or putting makeup on for work when you’d rather not! 

To me, when performing this piece I felt I was able to pull stereotypical feminine, heterosexual labels away from me. After leaving a small town in Essex, I was able to explore who I was as a person as well as my sexuality whilst away at University.