Painful Suspense is an installation that was made in response to MP Jess Philip's reading out of the names of women murdered in the previous year from the Femicide Census compiled by Karen Ingala Smith.

It addresses issues around domestic violence and violence against women and is inspired by Ingala Smith’s Counting Dead Women Project. This list is read out every year on International Women's Day and highlights the ongoing problem of Violence Against Women and Girls. This sparked an interest and an acknowledgement of my own survival from a coercively controlling marriage alongside the realization that I am lucky to still be here to make this work.

In remembrance of all the women murdered over the past five years, I have created memorials with the names of these women stitched onto five aprons with each apron representing one year. Nailed to their frames, the aprons are kept on tenterhooks—an ancient process of keeping fabric taut which also describes the emotion of painful suspense.