CALL FOR ARTISTS working with Performance and Live Action

Mothering (smothering) it’s your most important role! It stretches you in all directions…. It pulls you inside out.

Becoming a mother can leave a woman with ambivalent feelings towards motherhood as she is forced to come to terms with complex emotions very quickly, often in extreme circumstances, and often in isolation.  We are peddled a perfect, unattainable image of motherhood, in advertising and media of all descriptions, but it is common to feel angry, sad, overwhelmed, insecure, and more, and we find ourselves questioning whether we should be feeling these emotions at all. The most powerful proponent of these unrealistic expectations is organized religion, forming the backbone of most cultures worldwide and giving us the “Idealized Mother”.  No one can live up to it, but we all continue to try………and if we don’t, or when the realities of being a mother leave us with feelings of guilt, can this guilt be used constructively? Is it possible to love your children but hate the auspice of motherhood?

Inside-Out refers to the internal experience and conflict. Desperate Artwives would like to ask artists to pull apart these experiences of internal conflict and begin to articulate them, with courage, through performance art and live action.

Desperate Artwives want to inspire women to engage in Mothering without apology!

When: Saturday 30th June from 6:30pm

Where: Leyden Gallery, Spitalfields

Who: Women Artists Mothers

What: Takeover the Gallery in the shape of performance and live action

Why: To help identify and encourage women to come to terms with being human!

We are looking for thought provoking, questioning and surprising proposals.

The performances and interventions will be within the gallery space and can be short, long, recurring. They can be inside the gallery, at street level, in the basement area, or outside the gallery.

Desperate Artwives feel this is an ideal opportunity for women and mothers to challenge a mainstream audience and expose them to the concepts and challenges we face in our lives and represent in our practice.

Please send a proposal to [email protected]

Subject: InsideOut

By: Midnight, Wednesday 20th June

If you have photographs or video links for your performance, please send through together with your proposal, however this can be a new piece. If it is a new work please give as much information about it as you can.