The piece explores the mythology of the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer active in the North of England in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly with respect to the fear that he inspired and the way in which his actions changed women’s lives forever. Multiple attacks and the vicious murders of 13 women, coupled with an ineffectual police investigation, led to women revolting against the concept that they were unable to walk the streets in safety, with the genesis of the ‘Take Back the Night’ movement, where thousands of women marched in solidarity through the streets at night, protesting their right to walk around unmolested like any other human being

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Exploring the guttural sensations of fear and intimidation common to every woman who fears attack, rape, murder, the hate-inspired destruction of femininity, the installation consists of packages of meat representing significant parts of women’s bodies – ribs, a stomach, a uterus – what we are reduced to in societal and patriarchal terms, as well as specific areas targeted by the Ripper for violent attack. The meat-body is surrounded by words of violence from the Ripper’s statements to West Yorkshire police, made upon his eventual, and accidental, arrest, emulating the hatred towards women inherent in language.

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The artist is linked to the history of this murderer through her birth in the Yorkshire city of Leeds in 1980, site of many of the Ripper’s attacks, and was raised by women who had personally experienced the horror of living through that time in the North.