International Women's Day 2019

Rebecca Catterall, Studio Director and Founder

I’m not doing the #balanceforbetter pose because it seems at odds with the notion of difference & doing things your own way, & I’d need someone to take a picture. There isn’t anyone so I’m using this one by @_jocrawford

Getting Sunken Studio off the ground has been a solo endeavour &, although I ask for advice and run ideas past people, every decision has been made by me. Each day I start knowing I’m going to make mistakes. I don’t let my anxieties get the better of me because most things can be rectified, & if I don’t make mistakes I’ll never learn anything. I don’t want to stagnate & Sunken Studio started from that resistance to accept things as they are.

Along the way I’ve met plenty of people offering guidance. Alongside great advice, there’s been plenty of cautious advice... you know, the sort of attitudes, my own and other people’s, that quietly underestimates what might be possible. Early on I acknowledged that it’s important to recognise that type of advice as sceptical & I file it under ‘to defy’. Expectations are a result of cultural, economic and social conditions & it’s bloody hard to shift them if your only met by people with the same values. So difference is important & it’s important to create space for it & to listen to it. We’re all sceptics & are surround by scepticism. It’s innate, insipid and subtle. A lot of inequalities are subtle attitudes that the owner & recipient aren’t necessarily aware of - it’s why things change slowly. To defy expectations is to change parameters. There’s no end. Keep chipping.