Tickets via Eventbrite – https://www.eventbrite.com/o/desperate-artwives-16861096223?s=83470493

Desperate Artwives is pleased to announce an opportunity, for artists who are also mothers, to take part in a series of three workshops at Platform 1 Gallery, culminating in an Open Day where works made will be on show to the public. Dagmara Bilon, Teresa Albor and Katy Howe who are artists and mothers themselves, will each be leading participating artists on a journey to explore the maternal experience, both individually and collectively. The aim will be to help artists consider different ways of working and challenging their current practise, with a focus on exploring and uncovering the power of the “sentimental” in the art of the maternal.

We rarely see motherhood and the maternal, outside of their idealistic depictions. A taboo continues to surround the art of the maternal where it is often considered to be, too “sentimental” to be interesting, due to it’s subjective nature. The Patriarchal discourse that early feminists engaged with, in the 1960’s and 70’s, where pregnancy and therefore motherhood should not and must not be seen, unless mediated through the male gaze, persists in many ways today. Artists who are mothers are under-represented within the art world on every level, and opportunities for them are few, and limited. The frequently held belief that you cannot be a (good) artist AND a (good) mother is often perpetuated by women artists ourselves. But our subjective “sentimental” maternal experiences are significant and powerful, and resonate with value. They become a huge part of our lived experience, which in turn feeds back into the work we make. These subjective and sentimental experiences need to be represented and validated both in the art world and further afield. The workshops will seek to engage with this by making powerful and compelling art on our own terms, therefore reframing the subjective “sentimentality” of maternal art. The workshops’ culmination will result in an informal open day at Platform 1 Gallery.

We would encourage applicants to participate in all three workshops as you will have a better opportunity to explore the issues in more depth. However, you are more than welcome to participate in just one or two workshops.
If you book all three workshops you’ll receive a £10 discount on the full amount (please contact us at [email protected] for more information regarding this option).

A small lunch, tea and coffee throughout the day and some materials are included in the final price.

 Workshop 1 : Choreography of Motherhood, by Dagmara Bilon
Saturday 28th April
This performative workshop will take an inward approach reconnecting with the self and paying attention to what is present in us. What is left of mothers when they don’t mother? We will investigate the history and memory of the maternal body and give expression through movement improvisation, automatic writing and drawing. In the afternoon we will condense our exploration into a gesture that we will share with each other and document in a still or moving image. It will be an inward journey, through the complexity of the body reduced to one simple gesture.

Please wear comfortable clothing including trainers,slippers or thick socks. No movement experience is required but a willingness to explore movement is necessary.
Please bring a piece of clothing that you never wear.

Dagmara is a performer, maker and choreographer, who performs under the pseudonym of Bala. Dagmara is the co-founder of the women’s performance collective “the Purple Ladies’ associate artist of ‘Himherandit’ productions. Over a decade she has created a diverse body of work which belong to the borderline realms of theatre performance, public

intervention and physical installation. Her practice spans drawing, painting, writing as well as somatic investigations.
https://www.eventbrite.com/o/desperate-artwives-16861096223?s=83470493

Workshop 2 : Note to Self, by Teresa Albor
Saturday 9th June
As women, especially as mothers, we are constantly completing small tasks – hundreds, thousands, millions of small tasks. In order to keep track of all these granular details we make “to do” lists… on paper, in our heads, scrawled in crayon, written with the stub of a pencil, on paper or sometimes on our bodies.The workshop will explore list making. We will make lists, examine historical lists, write, read, listen to each other and extract key text from which to make work. Although open-ended in terms of output – it is expected that we will write our lists on our bodies as part of the process and then photograph these moments. We will think about our bodies, our skin, as repository of memory – memory required to keep track of the many small tasks which we need to execute and which together constitute a very big thing, a membrane or “skin” that keeps our lives and the lives of our families together.

Teresa is an artist in residence in King’s college London’s Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience Department of Addiction. Working in collaboration with Dr Sally Marlow, Public Engagement Fellow and professor Sir John Strang, Professor of Addictions. Teresa has worked with highly stigmatised groups, most recently refugees, but previously with offenders including women in prison. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
https://www.eventbrite.com/o/desperate-artwives-16861096223?s=83470493

Workshop 3 : Removing the Mother-Hood , by Katy Howe
Saturday 16th June
Motherhood is loaded with meaning and can feel like a shroud of expectation over women and girls. Motherhood changes the landscape of our bodies and means we inhabit our landscapes differently, where the mother/child connection changes the definition of ourselves in unimaginable ways. The Mother-Hood with all it’s connotations, affects all women, whether they are mothers or not. The emphasis of this workshop will be upon actively remembering ourselves, looking at ways in which working creatively can help navigate the all-consuming shroud of the Mother-Hood. By utilising actions and explorations in performative movement and by making quick throwaway sculptural forms we will attempt to inhabit the landscape of the gallery. Through sculpture and movement, we will form visible and visceral landscapes of ourselves and reveal what’s underneath the mother-hood. Outcomes of work made may be diverse. They could be recorded on video or performed live at the open day, or there may be only traces left behind.

Participants are encouraged to bring with them an object or an experiential story of a memory, that reminds them of who they are independent from the mother-hood. Participants should be prepared to make work in a performative way.

Katy Howe is a multidisciplinary artist who works with a variety of media, ranging from collage, drawing and object making, to performance, installation, photography and video. Through these different mediums she explores notions of identity and interrogates the confines of gender stereotyping, always searching for other possibilities of expressing our gendered selves. Her process often has an autobiographical thread running through it. She is a former professional dancer with a background in dance and theatre and has a recent Masters Degree in Fine Art, from Central Saint Martins, UAL.

Tickets via EVENTBRITE – https://www.eventbrite.com/o/desperate-artwives-16861096223?s=83470493

OPEN DAY : Hosted by Desperate Artwives and Platform 1 Gallery Saturday 23rd June

http://platform1gallery.com/