Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood | Group Exhibition at

Event Details

VISUAL is pleased to present Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood. This landmark touring exhibition has been conceived by Hettie Judah in collaboration with Hayward Gallery Touring. Following a successful tour of the UK, Acts of Creation comes to VISUAL augmented by the inclusion of works from Irish artists and collections.

Spanning all of VISUAL’s galleries, Acts of Creation presents work in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, photography and sound that speaks to the experience of motherhood in all its complexity. At VISUAL, an accompanying in-depth learning programme will respond to the exhibition’s themes and works. A reading area, a reflection space and specialist workshops and tours will further provide visitors with ways to engage with the ideas and experiences reflected in this powerful 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 Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 70s to the present day.
While the Madonna and Child is one of the great subjects of European art, we rarely see art about real motherhood, in all its complexity. Acts of Creation addresses this blind spot in art history, asserting the artist mother as an important cultural figure.
How does the image of motherhood change when the artist is drawing on lived experience? What is made visible? What challenges are levelled at motherhood as an institution through which the mother is idealised as self-sacrificing, wholesome, tireless and uncomplaining?
Diverse experiences are explored across four thematic displays. Creation looks at conception, pregnancy, birth and nursing. It imagines motherhood as a creative act, albeit one in which joy might be tempered with anxiety, pain and exhaustion.
Maintenance is dedicated to the ongoing work of motherhood and caregiving in the day-to-day. Here we find artists engaged in domestic chores, keeping children safe, and navigating a balance between art and parenting.
In Loss artists reflect on experiences of miscarriage, adoption and involuntary childlessness. Works in this section also protest the loss of women’s reproductive rights.
The Temple is a series of self-portraits in which artists explore their own identity in relation to motherhood. For decades women were told they could not be both an artist and a mother. These portraits stand in defiance of that idea.

This exhibition features artworks that include nudity and explore childbirth, (in)fertility, miscarriage, abortion, loss and domestic abuse.