Stacey Chapman: Parts – An Exhibition

This exhibition deliberately rejects the well-worn path to artistic success—the one that demands specialisation in a single style, medium, or subject. Instead, *Parts* celebrates the messy, multifaceted reality of being human and being creative.

Stacey Chapman has spent too long fighting against her own diverse nature, trying to fit into neat artistic categories. This exhibition is her surrender to authenticity—a decision to lean into the fear of failure and embrace everything that wants to emerge. If a memory, thought, interest, or emotion needs physical expression, then it has purpose and validity, regardless of whether it conforms to what “serious” art should look like.

Here you’ll find the good alongside the emotionally ugly, the complex next to the shallow, working-class kitsch sitting comfortably with more refined pieces. This isn’t about creating a cohesive artistic statement—it’s about accepting all the parts that make up a whole person. Some might dismiss certain works as “low art” or mere craft. That’s exactly the kind of judgment this exhibition challenges.

‘Parts’ is an act of creative liberation, born from seeking a happier, healthier, and more integrated way of being. It’s about stopping the exhausting performance of trying to be a “proper” artist and instead showing up as you are—multitudes and all.

The hope is that visitors might recognize their own creative complexity and feel permission to embrace it. Perhaps they’ll leave wondering what they’ve been holding back, what parts of themselves they’ve been editing out for fear of not being taken seriously.

Because the truth is, we all contain multitudes. This exhibition simply asks: What if we stopped apologising for them?

Leisure by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare

Parts

Blur

In the fraction of a second between intention and capture lies the entire paradox of our contemporary existence. This exhibition presents deliberately blurred photographs that ask: Are we living our lives, or merely documenting them?

Parts emerges from a shortlist of some of the 4,000 iPhone images captured over three years—moments of existence on trains, in lockdown, in the art studio, house-sitting, during Christmas celebrations, daily walks with the dog and everything inbetween. But most significantly, these photographs document the deepest grief, profound loss that left me disassociated from the world, from which I am slowly emerging as a new wiser person, seeking peace, truth and stillness.

Each blurred image is born of movement, of the inability to stop, of the compulsion to record rather than inhabit. Yet within this blur lies unexpected grace: these out-of-focus moments remind me of where, when, and with whom I existed, especially during times I’ve totally forgotten. I need to see the photos either side, or check the location on my iPhone, to ground me and bring me back after spending so much time lost in my darkest days.

The blur becomes a metaphor for our fractured attention and our psychological state—rushing toward an uncertain destination while the richness of the present dissolves around us. Yet there’s beauty in this dissolution, truth in the out-of-focus sensibility that defines both grief and contemporary experience.

Some photographs achieve focus, representing those rare instances when genuine presence triumphs over the impulse to simply document. These clearer images serve as islands of attention in an ocean of motion, suggesting that the balance between being and recording is not only possible but essential for healing.

Parts challenges viewers to examine their own relationship with attention and memory. Are our photographs mere digital accumulations, or can we find, even in the blur, moments that serve our deepest need for connection and grounding? The exhibition title suggests the fragmented nature of memory and experience—how we exist in parts, sometimes blurred, sometimes clear, all contributing to the whole of who we are becoming.

In a world racing toward digital infinity, these photographs propose a different kind of time: one measured in the quality of our presence and our journey toward healing. They ask whether we’re creating a psychologically rich life filled with moments worthy of our attention, or simply rushing, in an ever-accelerating blur, toward the grave.

The choice, like the moment of focus, remains ours.

Other elements of the exhibition include collections of work depicting ceramic vessels and imaginary characters, textile fashion illustrations, drawings of fishermen, two major projects on Her Late Majesty Elizabeth II and other retrospectives including car prints.