VALIE EXPORT in 'Acts of Creation' On art and motherhood: the artists doing both
By Amah-Rose Abrams
‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’, a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, has opened in Bristol, showing work by more than 100 artists.
Does it have to be either/or when it comes to achieving our professional dreams and becoming a parent? It is a question considered by writer and critic Hettie Judah in a new Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, ‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’, on view at the Arnolfini in Bristol until 26 May 2024.
Four years in the making, the show features work by more than 100 artists. It is one of the only exhibitions in the UK to show work by artists exploring their own motherhood, and the impact that motherhood has had on their art.
Encompassing art from the feminist avant-garde to the present day, the show addresses many facets of motherhood, from documenting the experience, to balancing artistic creation with having a child, and mourning a maternal instinct that may never be fulfilled.
‘Almost all of the works on the show are intensely personal, often rooted in what would otherwise be tremendously private experiences,’ Judah explains.
The most striking thing about the show is how many of these expressions of really common experiences have not been seen in an exhibition before. Experiences of motherhood have not been considered material for art, yet the impact on mothers making art has been important.
‘It has been a hugely emotional experience,’ says Judah of the exhibition. ‘I’ve been engaged in correspondence with many of the artists in the show for years now – it has been a real thrill to be offered deeper insights into their work, but we’ve also shared a lot of tears. Artists have been told for years that the subject of motherhood was not of interest. They have been made to feel that in becoming mothers they had somehow invalidated themselves. Because motherhood has not been valued as a subject for art, I have often found out about works through talking to artists themselves. Almost all of the works on the show are intensely personal, often rooted in what would otherwise be tremendously private experiences.’
The range of work is representative of the breadth of personal experience, and the exhibition is divided into sections of Creation, Maintenance and Loss, with a series of films including one by Tracey Emin screening on a loop. Christine Voge’s Photographs from Chiswick Women’s Refuge, 1978, shows life in the women’s refuge that later became the organisation, Refuge. In the exhibition, they sit alongside VALIE EXPORT’s famous image of a woman birthing a washing machine, The Birth Madonna, 1976, and Cassie Arnold’s Bullet Proof Dress, 2022, a delicate sculpture of a child’s dress woven out of navy titanium, a comment on the relationship between US gun legislation and school shootings.
