Projects – Conversations with my Mother, 2015

Conversations with my Mother was part of a commission as part of Shifting Subjects at Abbey Walk Gallery in North East Lincolnshire. 

The exhibition included two Sarah Lucas self-portraits from the Arts Council Collection, around which the project pivoted, also commissioning work by Wendy Elia and Margaret Ashman.

The by-line – Contemporary Women Artists Telling the Self through the Visual Arts – pulled the content together and additional work by Miranda Whall was also included.

Conversations with my Mother is an installation comprising of a painting hanging above a vintage telephone table, on top of which there is a large hand-made book which transcribes the beginnings of conversations between the mothers and daughters taking part in The Listening Project (a collaboration between the BBC and the British Library). In the drawer of the cabinet, a second book of the same size is secreted, containing my own memories of my mother, prompted by their conversations.

The painting was achieved by inviting women from my own social circle, and who have a relationship with the North East Lincolnshire coastline, to provide images of them with their mothers and/or children. These were overlaid free-form, painted in oils on paper (prepared with gesso) to depict and abstract coastal.

An interview with Anna McNay for Aesthetica Magazine may be read here

A trailer for the resulting Shifting Subjects Documentary Film may be seen in MUSIC & FILMS

Shifting Subjects Catalogues are available at £10 + Shipping by contacting me or download the FREE pdf here