Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood

This new exhibition from Hayward Gallery Touring, curated by writer and critic Hettie Judah, 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 will address this blind spot in art history, asserting the artist mother as an important – if rarely visible – cultural figure.

The exhibition approaches motherhood as a creative enterprise, one at times tempered by ambivalence, exhaustion or grief. Addressing diverse experiences of motherhood, the displays span themes of creation, caregiving and loss. The heart of the exhibition is a series of revelatory self-portraits – a celebration of the artist as mother.

Acts of Creation presents painting, photography, sculpture, sound and film by more than sixty modern and contemporary artists, including Bobby Baker, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Susan Hiller, Chantal Joffe, Claudette Johnson and Paula Rego. 

Artworks in this exhibition address important issues surrounding women’s health and wellbeing, including nudity, childbirth, (in)fertility, miscarriage, abortion, loss, domestic abuse, adoption, sterilisation and obstetric violence.