Over the course of several months in 2025, I undertook a residency at the RSA Collections department in Edinburgh. The resulting work responds to archival material held in the RSA Collections relating to three of the earliest women artists to be included in the RSA archives: Christina Robertson, Fanny McIan and Phoebe Anna Traquair. All three were among the first women to be awarded the title of Honorary Academician by the RSA.

Using bookmaking techniques, I constructed three archival boxes to display reproductions of material held in the RSA Collections relating to each artist. Each box responds to the materials, colours and motifs found within the artists’ work. These are presented alongside reproductions of their artworks, their handwriting from correspondence with the RSA, and collected media clippings. I photographed each arrangement as a constructed set within its archival box. The resulting photographs form the double-page spreads of an artist’s book.

Alongside reflecting on the artists’ work and lives, the project considers the nature of the archive itself: the role of reproduction, the archival box as a framing device, and the ways in which archival material can be organised and communicated to a public audience. The boxes become both containers of information and constructed spaces through which the artists’ histories are re-presented.