For this exhibition we loaned the works: Therese in Ecstatic Childbirth by Hermione Wiltshire and The Crowning by Judy Chicago.
The first in a two-part exhibition on maternal politics, identity and embodiment, ‘Matrescence’ brought together an international range of works from immediately contemporary artists with an older generation of artists to address the unresolved issues around maternal subjectivity, embodiment and politics; issues that remain as pertinent today as when they were first explored in the 1970s. The group show explored the idea of ‘Matrescence,’ a term developed by anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 in an attempt to theorise the transformational processes of becoming a mother – one that is never really fully resolved.
Curated by Catherine McCormack, the core themes for this exhibition included ‘public and private reproductive bodies’, ‘maternity and obscenity’, as well as a rethinking of the eponymous archetype of the silent, suffering and idealised mother represented in Christian iconography.
‘Maternality’ is the second instalment of the two-part show on maternal politics and embodiment which focused on reproduction and the materiality of maternal bodies.
Curated by Catherine McCormack, the exhibition finds its starting point in the etymological root of the word “mother” as synonymous of matter (mater/materia in Latin) in a group show exploring female reproductive bodies in terms of material relations, both physical and political
More information at:
https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/79-matrescence-pv-thursday-14-november-6-8pm/overview/
https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/79-part-1-matrescence/press_release_text/