The egg, the womb, the head and the moon is an online, interdisciplinary, collaborative arts project that will be exhibited as part of the AHRC Motherhood in Post-1968 Women’s Writing: Cross Cultural and Interdisciplinary Dialogues conference at the University of London’s Senate House on Thursday 24th, Friday 25th and Saturday 26th October 2013, and on Friday 25th October, I will be delivering a presentation about the project at the conference.
This website contains contains moving and powerful art and texts by artists, performers, photographers, academics and poets exploring a diverse range of subjects about the maternal. Contributors to this wonderful project include; Char March, Christina MacRae, Eti Wade, Frances Earnshaw, Helen Sargeant, Kaye Heyes, Lena Simic, Paula Chambers, Paula McCloskey, Rebecca Lupton, Sally Barker, Teresa Wilson and Tracey Kershaw.
The egg, the womb, the head and the moon has been created to show existing work and research-driven practice about the maternal by the Mewe arts collective in response to the title. Curated by Helen Sargeant, the site includes documentation of visual art work, video, sound, performance and texts by members of Mewe, including contextual dialogue and blog posts that have arisen through the creative process. It is our aim to share our collective research and reveal the cross-disciplinary and collaborative nature of our practice in order to connect and exchange ideas with a wider audience.
The duration of this blog will be for nine months (42 weeks) – a time frame that purposefully mirrors that of the duration of pregnancy. The timing of this first exhibition at Senate House will coincide with the end of the first trimester. In May 2014 there will be an exhibition held at the Artsmill gallery in Hebden Bridge, with associated talks, workshops and events to mark the end of the 42 week long project. Work in this exhibition will have been created through a critical engagement with this website. The exhibition will therefore be born out of the communications and interactions made visible through this space.
