Pull up a chair

Mother-and-daughter artistic duo Caroline and Maisie Broadhead have combined their craft and image-making skills for an upcoming furniture-based photography show.

The Taking the Chair exhibition, at London’s Marsden Woo Gallery, will feature seven of daughter Maisie’s photographs, each of which will be based around a chair created by Caroline.

The photos are all inspired by paintings by the likes of Vermeer, Velasquez and Magritte, which centre around a chair (usually left empty). In the photos, the chairs themselves have been made by Caroline, who has refurbished second hand pieces of furniture.

Caroline and Maisie have also enlisted other members of the family to appear as models in the photographs, while family photographs sit on the mantelpieces and Caroline’s mother’s wedding dress is used as a dressing up costume for Maisie’s son.

But whatever surrounds them, the chairs remain the stars of the images. The gallery says, ‘Inspired by the often empty, upturned or “about to be sat on” chairs in the paintings… they operate somewhere between an image and an object.’

The exhibition, the gallery says, is ‘a highly personal take on what has clearly been, throughout its history, more than a simple everyday piece of furniture.’

Taking the Chair is at the Marsden Woo Gallery, London EC1V, from 15 September-29 October.