Hidden Drawers was a project with the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Kensington Palace.  The project aimed to explore parallels between the activity of drawing and costumes conservation and curation.

 

Over the course of three years many garments in the collection were drawn but the focus came to be on underwear as the most intimate and private of garments.  The finished drawings depict a collection of nightgowns that once belonged to Queen Alexandra, consort of Edward VII. As a group of objects they appealed for their qualities of invisibility, as intimate garments which are for the main part of their existence in the archive, out of sight, stored in their boxes, looking uncannily as if they are sleeping. In many ways, they are half present, half absent.

 

A sense of this feint presence is manifest in the drawing.  Each of these drawings is a thin gauzy veil. The surface is transparent, so transparent that when held, a hand is visible behind the support The surface is almost completely dematerialised. The barely visible marks, which seem inseparable from the surface, are spidery white lines, looping and weaving together to form a ghostly image of a life- size garment.