Jack the Ladder
 

2000
21 photo series in a ladder-shape 3,5 metres high, C-prints mounted on Forex and sealed, glass and clip frame: 7 photos 27 x 40 cm, 14 photos 40 x 50 cm, edition of 7

The photo series Jack the Ladder is also available in a smaller version:
14 Photos 13 x 18 cm, 7 Photos 19 x 13 cm, edition of 7.

A series of 12 texts with images have been prepared by the artist to accompany the photo series (2000-03); these posters inform the spectator of motivation and background to the artwork.

 

Jack the Ladder is a 21 photograph series displayed in a ladder shape (a vertical ladder with 7 rungs over 3.5 metres high). The portrait of a young Chinese woman Echo-Ho is depicted in fragmented images. Apart from wearing black tights, she is naked and photographed against a pre-dominantly red-coloured, oriental carpet. She has been painting her fingernails. There are runs in her nylons (ladders) stopped with drops of red nail varnish, which may, on the other hand, be drops of blood. In some of the photos piles of steel nails can be seen, in others broken glass and a set of five antique English fruit knives with pearl handles.

Jack the Ladder commemorates the victims of racial and sexual intolerance present and past: the London nail bomb attacks of 1999 and the 'Jack the Ripper' killings a hundred years earlier.

Tanya Ury