Mrs West was an important and influential figure for Couchman in her youth, and these photographs constitute a homage to her, but also involveing mourning and melancholy. In considering these hats as Couchman wears them, their original owner the resilient Mrs West, and the modes and conditions of the hats’ invention, the viewer of Mrs. West’s Hats is asked to consider a wide range of important and engaging issues: representation and self-portraiture, generational and historical transmission, identity and difference, fashion and the conflicting configurations of selfhood when filtered – indeed constructed – through particular historical conventions of dress and display. www.helencouchman.com/mrswestshats/mrswestshats.asp
