Press Release 2025

Shauna Richardson rips off the mask

Shauna Richardson is a subversive. As an award-winning conceptual artist, specialising in crochet sculpture, what else could she be? Yet, it is more than the very idea of using crochet to create 25ft lions for the 2012 Olympics, (probably her most famous artwork), it is about how she began, why, what and how she does it, and where her being and her art has led. Today she has taken a scythe and cut down the scale of her past work. Her new, emergent work is still as subversive as it gets. She has torn off the masks we all wear forcing us to confront themes such as identity and authenticity, nostalgia and collective memory. Even the name of the project, APE-APE is an echo of childhood, and Richardson will be the first to admit that she feels as if she still has a foot in Neverland.

The new work is intense, unsettling and a paean to craftmanship, ‘a personal exploration of mimicry and masking, reflecting the experiences of concealing neurodivergent traits to conform to societal expectations.’

What would it be like to examine our discarded skins? Richardson gives us more than a taste of what can be a riveting yet disturbing experience as she presents us with life-size crocheted chimpanzee skins, identical in form but each individually free- styled, boldly coloured, picking out iconic childhood characters from Super Mario to Miss Piggy, all male and yes, Miss Piggy does get a penis. The result is obfuscation, sometimes the emptiness of the skin feels sinister despite the recognition of features, despite understanding that what is there is discarded disguise. Richardson writes ‘this visual distortion serves as a metaphor for the act of masking both as a survival mechanism and a means of erasure.’ Although the use of the chimpanzee masking of Robbie Williams in Michael Gracey’s biopic A Better Man (2024), is revelatory, the erasure of all the layers of fame and flickery that disguise the truth of an individual gives us an honest portrait. Whatever Richardson is crocheting; it is loaded with zeitgeist.

How did picking up a crochet hook as a child lead to a squad of male chimpanzee crocheted skins encased in too-small display cases reflecting the discomfort and pressure to ‘fit’ into spaces never designed for them – uniting the art of concealment and exposure? APE-APE holds a kind of freak show exhibitionism. A reminder of disgraced practices like the orang-utan displayed in a glass box in the summer heat of a seaside town or the savaging of bears for entertainment. A taste of the cruelty of growing up neurodivergent in a world which stares at everything that evades the norm.

Richardson was born in Northern Ireland, a place of violent divides. Both her grandmothers crocheted, and she picked up ‘a stitch or two,’ although quick to explain that she never learned to do it properly. ‘I took that really basic stitch and started playing with it.’ Quick also to point out that she doesn’t do many things by the rules because that’s the way her brain works. Richardson’s recently diagnosed ADHD lies inside everything she does, not least her ability to hyper-focus when she is creating. There was no other career open to her; expelled from school as she tried to mask how different her neurodivergent brain was from fellow students and teachers as exams approached, fearful of discovery - art was comfort, refuge, a future.

These days we are beginning to recognize that girls and women suffer from ADHD just as much as boys, and although it was a neurological condition with a paper trail from the second half of the 18th century it wasn’t seen as a female affliction. For Richardson, it was a matter of hiding in plain sight. It completely shaped the trajectory of her life. ‘I have an inquisitive mind,’ she explained, ‘and although I’m really interested in things, I just can’t retain information.’ At university, she became obsessed with art theory, it sent her brain into overdrive – ‘returning to crochet quietened me.’

People would wonder how Richardson could spend so much time in her studio working on very large commissions, that single stitch creating realistic, life-size animals but to her it was heaven. Her brain was stilled in the methodical rhythm of the work.

Coupled with this methodical working is a subversive humour. Her first big piece of work was a life size brown bear which she entered into a local flower and produce show in Burnham Market, Norfolk. We can only imagine the response of the other contestants; tea cosies and potholders supremely overshadowed by the bear. It was a clever, conceptual intervention upended when Richardson was awarded ‘Best in Show.’ Somewhere, in her very ordered home in Overstrand, Norfolk, is the rosette.

From the age of 21, she became a full-time artist, and over her career has created a menagerie of life-size creatures, a polar bear, boar’s head, a graceful deer, their taxidermy stances straight out of a 19th century naturalist tradition of collecting. She coined the term Crochetdermy and registered it as a trademark as international commissions flooded in. Intriguingly these extraordinary evocations of the power and nature of wild creatures are assembled as trophies of the hunting and shooting kind, or standing on pedestals, an ironic intervention for creatures at risk of extinction and a comment on the endangered nature of crochet as a craft and artform. Richardson is nothing if not committed to conservation and wonder. This work led to her 2009 commission to create three 25ft lions which toured the country in Snow White like glass box as part of the 2012 Olympics. It was an incredible achievement. Nothing of that size had ever been crocheted before. But all the recognition, the awards, the accolades were just one side of a coin, the other side was living with ADHD and the strain of all those constant strategies to hide the impact of the condition.

It is hard not to see Richardson as the Grayson Perry of crochet. The desire to prompt a reaction, upend traditions, play with alter egos, (Richardson’s is a man with a fine beard called Jim), and expose through high art craftmanship the authentic experience of the other. Without question, Richardson started a revolution in wool and hook, pioneering a new field of imagination for crochet that did not exist before.

Her work and legacy is unique but as with other creative fields, Richardson has had to take stock of the impact of AI. When it first came on the scene, she felt quite defeated. ‘I had spent two years creating three giant lions, but compared to the kind of things AI can replicate in crochet, they looked nothing. I didn’t know where I stood, or if my work had any significance at all anymore – then I thought, if others are feeling the same way, and people stop manually creating – then maybe my work will become something rare and significant, a kind of relic.’

But the ability for machine intelligence to masquerade as an artist has reinforced her commitment to celebrate human endeavour and authenticity. ‘Now more than ever, I believe in the power of individuality and the beauty of imperfection – qualities that will only gain significance in an increasingly digital world.’ It heightened her desire to craft with heart and hands. APE-APE is an uncompromising rebuff to AI in that even though each chimpanzee skin is formatted in the same way, each one, individually created is different. ‘APE-APE’, states Richardson, ‘stands as a testament to the enduring power of authenticity and the irreplaceable nature of human endeavour.’