Modern Icons

I'VE worked a lot in rubber and I've used gloves before but in a very tactile way. This piece, 'Marigold', came out of looking at the local funerals. They have amazing flower pieces that say 'Mum' and 'Dad'. But it was obvious that I should be more minimalist and so it became a colour-field work. I use materials for what they are but then they take on connotations. I'm very much a formalist but that doesn't mean there aren't other things going on here. It's that Shakespearean thing of the city being the beehive. I'm interested in the sociology of the street. The audience brings things to it. It seems to appeal to the Fifties housewife generation. The company probably called the gloves Marigold because they saw a flower-like image in them. The gloves are domestic and pretty and I like the way they grope the window.

Maggie Ellenby's 'Marigold' is at 108 Roseberry Ave to 24 Oct.

(Photograph omitted)