'Stemming from her previous background as a textile artist, this work draws widely on the entire spectrum of contemporary art,craft and design practice. Today we tend to maintain that conception and idea are paramount; artists move freely between the different forms of visual exploration, such as video, performance and installation. However Heather Connelly also believes in practical skill. Drawing and handicraft play an equal role in the constitution of her work; a concern for making is crucial, the process which links both her intenton and her expression'. The work 'demonstrates a concern with both personal and shared experiences; journeys, the home and particularly the enchantment of the fairy tale, are combined with an unexpected approach which stimulates our imaginative senses. It is a complex fusion of ideas, objects, memories and attitudes, raising issues to do with art and identity, skill and craft, the hand-made and mass production, and the found object in art; all that is both contemporary and traditional.'

'...Growing up stands approximately five meters high. It's a magnetic piece, tall and elegant, flowing down and skirting the floor of a square room surrounded by elaborate mirrors hung salon-syle on the walls. It is a dress but it is unwearable. Meticulously fabricted by handstitching together paper photocopies of a human spine, the image is rhythmically repeated, creating a huge expansion of pattern as it grows from the neat bodice to the voluminous folds of the skirt. Within the paper structure there is a luscious red velvet lining, adding a rich and exhuberent dimension to an object which is otherwise modest and rudimentary. Growing up embodies many of the issues central to Heather Connelly's work: the use of the commonplace materials such as paper, black thread and fabric; the manipulation of these materials to create a sculptural presence; the sense of nostalgia invested in the found object, picked up and kept, removed from its original context. And equally powerful is what might best be described as a kind of child-like intrigue, the drive to explore objects and the possessions of others with intense curiosity. It reminds us of rozika Parker's reference to stitchery in The Subversive Stitch, as both an 'individual test of skill' and part of a child's progression to womanhood.'

'In the manner of the fairy tale or mythological saga, Coming of Age takes the viewer on a journey. There is a filmic theatricality to the installation, it arouses a sense of apprehension and excitement about what lies ahead.'

'The relationship between women and craft is acontested issue, however Connelly shows no trepidation in her use of materials, processes or subject matter. On the contrary, she appears to take pleasure in exploiting the texhniques of what some may desribe as incredulous techniques and imagery. her work manifests two main concerns; an appropriation of earlier techniques of women's craft and the exploration and reinvention of the methods of making contemporary art.'

'Connelly lovingly aetheticises her materials, whether paper or thread, glue or wire. The scale and fantasy of the installation enforces the childhood intrigue and the intricate fabrications heighten our curiousity. her influences are wide reaching; we could cite the interiors of palaces and stately homes, Arte Povera, Louise Bourgeois, Annette Messager, Mona Hatoum, the use of domestic in contemporary art, the writings of Marina warner and much, much more. The Mythical and fairy tale enchantment seduces the participant as the story unfolds....The fairy tale is an acknowledged genre in literature. It represents a realm of human fantasy. We lapped it up as children and never forgot the twisted tales. But there is nothing purely child-like about fairy tales. they relate both to the present society and history, to experience and to the unknown.'

'Just like the fairy tale, Coming of Age invites many literary possibilities, but also invites the many polymorphic readings which must lie ahead.

'Deeper meanings reside in the fairytales told to me in my childhood than the truth that is taught by Life'

(Schiller, the Piccolimini in P. Dormer, The Art of the maker, Thames & Hudson, 1994)