Little Girl (Red Hair)

Nylon Tights, Muslin, Polyester Stuffing, Pastel, Gesso, Pencil, Human Hair.

Little Girl (Red Hair) features a standing doll with long wavy red real human hair. The lower part of its arms and legs is porcelain, and it has a soft fabric body and head. The doll is barefoot and dressed in a plaid blue and red cotton frock with a cream collar.

One of a series of dressed hacked ‘little girl’ sculpture dolls. The ‘hacked doll’ type artworks have the original ‘pretty’ head of the doll replaced with an ‘ugly’ uncanny head with a pale unhealthy complexion. The ‘otherworldly’ appearance is suggestive of a changeling child or sprite and is not quite human in appearance. The Little Girl (Red Hair) has a particularly flirtatious expression and seems to be looking cheekily sideways. There is a cuteness about this little girl doll – although it is also quite uncanny!

The hacked doll series began in 2023 at Salford University Fine Art MA programme and has carried on since then, using preloved dolls found in charity shops and transforming them into something a little stranger and freighted with personality.