M/other is an exhibition on contemporary artists from around New Zealand creating work about motherhood, mothering and maternal roles. Artist contributions from: Erena Baker, Leala Faleseuga, Rhonda Halliday, Turumeke Harrington, Claire Harris, Tash Helasdottir-Cole, Zoe Thompson-Moore, Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Kararaina Toi, Justine Walker
Imogen Di Sapia reflects on the folklore of The Selkie through craft. This body of textile work is an exploration of motherhood and perinatal mental health through weaving, using the symbols and themes within the story to communicate the experience. The exhibition also considers ethical textiles and the use of materials and methods that consider animal welfare and the environment.
Patti Maciesz is a Polish-American artist and curator based in Oakland, California. Her paintings explore place, narrative and identity and blend digital and analog techniques. Her work has been exhibited in Paris, Warsaw, Vermont, New York and Oakland. She graduated with a degree in Visual Arts from Bennington College in 2007 and later managed the Aldrich Editions program at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. She has since curated multiple international exhibitions including the inaugural exhibition at the Centre Du Mode et du Dessin for Chic Art Fair in Paris, Nowa Soda, an artist-in-residency program in Krakow and most recently Country Singer, a digital art show at Heron Arts in San Francisco featuring artist Dmitri Cherniak. Her recent work takes on the secrecy surrounding postpartum life by presenting the often brutal and sometimes comic realities of early parenthood. In a series of watercolor paintings the artist shares relatable and intimate portraits of her changing body, as well as documentation of the endless minutiae and unrewarded sacrifice of caring for a new child. Part figurative abstraction, part charting and time-sheet, Maciesz resists the invisibility that envelopes mothers with her work.
Photography and text often have a symbiotic relationship; one aids and enhances our understanding of the other. We are able to create nuances of meaning by combining them.
In this project, I attempt to make sense of my expectations of motherhood, the reality of the experience and my emotional responses to both.
I use images and text relating to me and my daughter to explore the limitations of representation inherent in both mediums - it's impossible to fully represent the variety and breadth of the emotions or to show more than a tiny fragment of the relationship she and I share.
The egg, the womb, the head and the moon is an online, interdisciplinary, collaborative arts project that that will last for nine months (42 weeks)–a time frame that purposefully mirrors that of the duration of pregnancy. The site contains moving and powerful art and texts by artists, performers, photographers, academics and poets exploring a diverse range of subjects about the maternal.
At the end of the 42 weeks (May 2014) a celebratory exhibition will be held at The Artsmill Gallery in Hebden Bridge. The exhibition will be born out of the communications and interactions made visible through this space.
The site includes documentation of visual art work, video, sound, performance and texts including contextual dialogue and blog posts that have arisen through the creative process. It is our aim to share our collective research and reveal the cross-disciplinary and collaborative nature of our practice in order to connect and exchange ideas with a wider audience.