The Egg The Womb The Head and The Moon.

An exhibition of art about the maternal.

Exhibition Dates:

3rd May- 25th May 2014

Open Wed-Sun

11am-4pm / Free

Opening:

Friday, 2nd May 6-9pm: Poetry reading by Char March, performance by Mo Brown and screening of Tyven by Adele Myers.

Artsmill, The David Wright Gallery, Linden Mill, Linden Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 7DN

Tel: 01422-647072

www.artsmill.org

Adele Myers, Bird Jones and Heald, Char March, Eti Wade, Frances Earnshaw, Helen Sargeant, Janet Griffiths, Kaye Heyes, Lena Simic, Mo Brown, Paula Chambers, Paula McCloskey, Rachèle Howard, Rebecca Lupton, Sally Barker, Tabitha Moses, Teresa Wilson, Tracey Kershaw

Eti Wade, Making things, (Doing the splits ) 2013 — Eti Wade, *Making things, (Doing the splits),* 2013

The egg the womb the head and the moon is an exhibition that offers an alternative to idealised representations of motherhood. By looking at the everyday, the complexities of emotions, the lived reality, the exhibition captures the kinds of conversations that can be overheard between close friends, between mothers and parents at the school gates, at the playgroup, at home or at work during a coffee break. Honest portrayals of maternal everyday are conveyed through visuals and narratives which weave through a rich variety of subjects; fertility, pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, the tug and the pull of mothering of love, longing and loss.

The exhibition has been borne out of curator Helen Sargeant’s online initiative. Artists, academics, poets, performers, film-makers and writers, all part of the MeWe collective have, for a period of 42 weeks shared their experiences of motherhood on The egg, the womb the head and the moon website. The 42 weeks duration of the project mirrors that of gestation and the exhibition can be said to mark the birth. This on-line space enabled collaborating artists to share and exchange ideas in order to reflect upon their life experiences and make new work.

“In her essay “Feminism and Motherhood” (The Mother Reader )Susan Griffin has compared her note taking on motherhood to a resistance fighters journal where there is “time only for brief illuminations which we must record between interruptions”. Work made for this exhibition has been created alongside the demands of mothering, during and in-between caring for children, housework, paid work, in the dead of night, in the early hours, picking through the debris of lego, stuffing dirty clothes in the washing machine, cooking, clearing up and supping mugs of coffee that have long gone cold.

The exhibition brings together, installation, drawing, print, sculpture, video, photography, sound, performance, poetry and texts, personal and powerful artworks exploring a diverse range of subjects about the maternal.

Work by Amy Dignam, Christina MacRae, Ellen Storm, Francesca Keayes, Jasmine Gauthier, Jodie Hawkes, Juliet Guiness, Kristin Fredricksson, Lizzie Philps, Marina Cavazza and Elge Kackute, Rachel Fallon, Rebecca Baillie and Rosemary Betterton will also be shown alongside the physical work in the show via The Egg The Womb The Head and The Moon website installed within the gallery space.

The Egg, The Womb, The Head and The Moon.

Exhibitions