Hayward Gallery Touring
March 9, 2024–June 26, 2025
Arnolfini, Bristol: March 9–May 26, 2024
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham: June 22–September 29, 2024
Millennium Gallery, Sheffield: October 24, 2024–January 19, 2025
Dundee Contemporary Arts: February–June 2025
Hayward Gallery Touring’s major group exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood plunges into the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through over 100 artworks, from the feminist avant-garde to the present day.
While the Madonna and Child is one of the great subjects of European art, we rarely see art about motherhood as a lived experience, in all its complexity. Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood addresses this blind spot in art history, asserting the artist mother as an important—if rarely visible—cultural figure.
Featuring the work of more than 60 modern and contemporary artists, this exhibition approaches motherhood as a creative enterprise, albeit one at times tempered by ambivalence, exhaustion or grief. Acts of Creation explores lived experience of motherhood, offering a complex account that engages with contemporary concerns about gender, caregiving and reproductive rights.
The exhibition addresses diverse experiences of motherhood across four themes: Creation, which looks at conception, pregnancy, birth and nursing; Maintenance, which explores motherhood and caregiving in the day-to-day; The Temple, a homage to the artist mother, and Loss, which touches on miscarriage and involuntary childlessness, as well as reproductive rights. The heart of the exhibition is a series of revelatory self-portraits—a celebration of the artist as mother.
Featuring painting, sculpture, drawing, performance, photography, moving image, print and textiles, artists presenting work across the exhibition's tour include:
Felicity Allen; Janine Antoni; Cassie Arnold; Bobby Baker; Elina Brotherus; Liesel Burisch; Cathy Cade; Lea Cetera; Jai Chuhan; Eileen Cooper; Renee Cox; Dorothy Cross; Rineke Dijkstra; Natalie Djurberg and Hans Berg; Leni Dothan; Marlene Dumas; Catherine Elwes; Tracey Emin; Jessa Fairbrother; Rachel Fallon; Feministo; Fenix; Maeve Gilmore; Anna Grevenitis; Camille Henrot; Susan Hiller; Ghislaine Howard; Elsa James; Chantal Joffe; Claudette Johnson; Mary Kelly; Liss LaFleur; Tala Madani; Sally Mann; MATERNAL FANTASIES; Lindsey Mendick; Mother Art; Wangechi Mutu; Ishbel Myerscough; Everlyn Nicodemus; Catherine Opie; Fani Parali; Celia Paul; Cathie Pilkington; Laure Prouvost; Paula Rego; Su Richardson; Sister Seven; Monica Sjöö; Annegret Soltau; Tabitha Soren; Heather Spears; Nancy Spero; Hannah Starkey; Emma Talbot; The Hackney Flashers; Mierle Laderman Ukeles; Valie Export; Christine Voge; Del la Grace Volcano; Barbara Walker; Caroline Walker; Carrie Mae Weems; Nancy Willis; Hermione Wiltshire; Hermione Wiltshire and Clare Bottomley; Carmen Winant; Daphne Wright; Billie Zangewa.
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood is curated by Hettie Judah with Hayward Gallery Touring.
It is accompanied by a new book by Hettie Judah that will be published in July 2024 by Thames and Hudson. The book explores art and motherhood over the last 500 years, looking at both motherhood as the subject of art and the circumstance of its creation.
The exhibition is also accompanied by a lively programme of public events across the UK.
