If, like me, you couldn’t make it to the opening of the The Percival Prize, you can see footage of the installation down below. My submission Mother Work (2020) can be viewed in this exhibition launch video (at 1m 29s mark). The show is on until July 3rd 2022 in Townsville at the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery.
Details of this year prize winners can be seen on the gallery website here.
If you’ve missed the Motherfesto Zine launch you can still purchase a copy here.
The Motherfesto zine is a celebration of motherhood and feminism. It features recipes, tips, a sewing pattern, a link to an audio reading, and a poster. All in one in riso printing.
The Motherfesto zine is about reconnecting with my childhood joy of making little books on just about everything. This project was part of my art residency (2021-2022) with the Womens Art Register in collaboration with And Also Presents.
Motherfesto zine features: recipes, tips, sewing project, audio link, etc
‘Motherwork’
Proud to have been shortlisted as a Finalist for the 2022 Percival Photographic Portrait Prize, held at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery (Townsville, QLD) from Saturday 23 April until Sunday 3 July 2022.
Proud to have ‘Motherwork’ (2021) in the 2021 Ilford CCP Salon opening Saturday until Feb. 6th. Milieu Property are sponsoring Salon and have featured my entry in their special limited print edition of selected Salon artists. My profile can be read here. Exciting times! Book you visit through the CCP website.
Still from ‘Revolutionary Mother’ 2019.
Honoured to be part of this group show at the Stockroom Gallery in Kyneton. I’ll be showing ‘Shift Work’ featuring my video ‘Revolutionary Mother’ and my diptych ‘Motherwork’. Also showing are NAOISE HALLORAN-MACKAY, MICHAEL CARNEY, KRISTIN BURGHAM.
OPening in this Saturday 20th March 2021, 4:30pm at the Stockroom in Kyneton.
Motherwork I & 2, 2021 - installation detail, 1000 mm x 1200 mm, type-C print, Australian hardwood frame
This show is finally up after being postponed by a year! The pandemic helped in creating new work for the new year. ‘Motherwork’ is part of my show ‘Invisible Labour’ now showing at the Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library until April 25th 2021.
There will be an opening celebration next Wednesday March 24th from 5:30pm-7pm. Please reserve your tickets here .
‘Home Works’, 2021 - installation detail at ‘Make A Fuss’
I’m delighted to be part of ‘Make a Fuss’, the exhibition curated by Kate Robinson, the feminist in residence 2020 of the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre.
My installation ‘Home Work’ found its way among the works of about 40 artists exploring the ideas surrounding identity, gender expectations, gender-based violence, feminism, culture, & social issues. Worth checking out how poetry, textiles, silversmithing, installation, drawing and photography have been used to depict some of the everyday challenges women have to face.
The show runs until March 22nd 2021 at the QVWC.
I had the privilege to talk about my mothering and art practice here with the Artist/Mother Podcast founder Kaylan Buteyn this past January. We chatted about a recent body of work, Home Works (2020), and Strategies (2019). We spoke about earlier works structures I built to perform voluntary self-isolation. These structures had been fabricated to experience privacy as a mother. Given the unprecedented times we’re experiencing during a pandemic, these works are given another opportunity to be revisited.
The Artist/Mother Podcast is so insightful regarding the experiences of other fellow mother/artists out there around the world. A great platform to discover unknown artists.
I’m very excited and honoured to have been selected as one of the 59 artists featured in Unwonderful Mother, the Artist/Mother Podcast exhibition curated by Qiana Mestrich (whose photography is worth checking out!).
Mestrich’s statement for the exhibition highlights the social constructs surrounding what it means to be a woman. You’re not wonderful just because you’re a mother. Those words were taken from an interview with artist Ishiuchi Miyako.
The exhibition features a wide array of creative responses given the constraints we’ve been experiencing in 2020.
At the end of last year, I had the opportunity to participate in an online show ‘Make a Fuss’ (see below) curated by Kate Robinson, the feminist in residence of the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre (QVWC). It features 150 artworks accompanied with audio recording about the works narrated by the artists.
Have a walk around this virtual gallery: the works are varied and some straight from heart.
You’ll find my submission, Home Works (2020), on the ceiling of the trailer in the virtual show.
Home Works (2020), dimension variable, calico, sand, acrylic
Make a Fuss’ will be made accessible for viewing in real life on the sites of the QVWC this March 2021. TBC.
Virtual Tour
In June 2020, I took advantage of that short period out of lockdown to set up an event in the Edinburgh Gardens. I wanted to hear people’s stories and experiences with feminism during self-isolation. I was curious to see how people managed to live according to their feminist values. How was it challenged?
In my structure, I sat in for 4 hours and interacted with whoever came up to me. Children, curious and more adventurous, walked up to me without any hesitation. Parents followed. I handed out clipboards, paper and pencils and asked for drawings, or anything in writing that would describe one’s experience with feminism. There were some great dialogues that happened on that day. The variety of responses was amazing. As mostly women and children approached me, it appeared that maybe the word ‘feminism’ written on my poster could have deterred potential participants. When I saw two men walking by and hesitating to stop, I invited them to participate. One man responded: “Oh, I thought feminism was only for women!” To which I replied: “Feminism is for everyone!” They walked away.
As this event was a first of this kind, I intend to explore other parts of Melbourne to compare people’s experiences with feminism during a pandemic.
Photos by Lucy Foster
At the beginning of the month, I hosted a virtual dinner, ‘Sharing is Caring’, in collaboration with Bus Projects. It sounds like an eternity now looking back! It feels like we were living in another dimension; time and space were completely redefined during the enforced self-isolation.
‘Sharing is Caring’ was an opportunity to get people together while sharing a meal. The timing couldn’t be better during lock down. Most of the participants cooked the recipe I had shared online a week prior. It was great to see the communal effort that resulted in a successful project. In fact, it was easier than I expected and prompted me to consider hosting a second one like this.
There was definitely something different about performing in your personal space versus performing in a gallery. Normally, the demarcation between the two spaces enables me to get settle gradually into a role. I felt I was shifting between the performing mother and the performing artist. As the online event unravelled and the mics were turned on, I became more engaged with the participants and less distracted by my immediate surroundings. Not as fun for the kids who more or less grasped what my hosting duties entailed. As a first time, it was nonetheless a great experience.
With the audience, we discussed how the lockdown affected our individual art practices, our lives and our roles and responsibilities. The overall consensus was how the unpredictability of what would happen next was unsettling to us all. Only time will tell.
Still from the virtual dinner ‘Sharing is Caring’.
In collaboration with Bus Projects, I’ll be hosting my first virtual dinner on May 9th 2020 6pm.
Given my love for cooking, hosting and engaging the community, this online event is a plan B while we’re practicing social/physical distancing.
Here’s the link to the event.
Hope to see you at my table!
Chewing the Fat was conducted as a KINGS ARI Flash Night event KINGS gallery in August 2018. Artists/parents were invited to come with their children at the gallery to share a meal that I had cooked. The idea was to create a space where artists/parents could meet and network with other like-minded people in a gallery space that was made family-friendly. The front of the gallery was set up as an intimate space where the meal was served. The middle gallery space was used for children to hang out after dinner. The children made a million paper planes.
I‘ve included my structure Trunk in the performance space which I used to store the plates and utensils and to display some of my personal mementos.
Come and check out the artworks of 20 some artists, including me, Saturday night.
In April 2018, I hosted at the VCA Stables 'How We Do it?', a sun-printing workshop where artists who were also parents were invited to joined me along with their children to share how they manage their roles as parents and artists in their day-to day lives.
Sun printing Workshop held at the Norma Redpath Studios during my residency with the Art/Mums Group in February 2018. The residency was part of the 'Doing Feminism, Sharing the World' which explored participatory art practice and collective collaborations. This project was coordinated by Professor Ann Marsh.
I wanted to create a free family-friendly art event where the participants (parents/carers and their children) could create their own sunprints with various found objects.
I picked up the catalog for the show "The Great Mother: Women, Maternity, and Power in Art and Visual Culture, 1900-2015" curated by Massimiliano Gioni in 2015. Great essays and interviews on how the image of the mother has been interpreted over the last 100 years or so under various socio-political and artistic movements over time. The exhibition featured male and female artists who challenged in their own creative manner the projected social constructs idealising the image of the mother at the time.
'Good Grief!' was on last week and was well received. I performed (with a guest) and I really enjoyed the experience. I had planned to spend the whole opening inside the structure. I cannot easily shake off the village. - Thoreau was about my ideal form of escape: a structure that would serve as both a workspace on its upright position and as a resting space once lying on its side. Moving, lifting, & tilting of the structure all had to be performed by myself. I saw these basic tasks as fundamental in representing effort in seeking some personal space to think or to relax.
Pretty excited to be part of this show in Sydney! I had the chance to meet with Lenine Bourke, whose idea it was to put together this show. There's a great selection of artists working with various media. There are two other artists from Melbourne, my fellow art-mums friends Clare Rae and Nina Ross. I'll be attending the panel discussion on Feb 6th and will be looking forward to meeting and greeting friends and other artists.
