Exhibition

Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood

22 Jun 2024 – 29 Sep 2024

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
11:00 – 17:00
Wednesday
11:00 – 17:00
Thursday
11:00 – 17:00
Friday
11:00 – 17:00
Saturday
11:00 – 17:00
Sunday
11:00 – 17:00

Free admission

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Midlands Arts Centre

Birmingham
England, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Bus routes with stops close to MAC include: 1, 35, 41, 45/47, 61/63. Check NX West Midlands for more information.
  • MAC is situated near to four train stations; Five Ways, University, Selly Oak and Birmingham New Street. The closest station is Five Ways - being 1.3 miles away, followed by University (1.4), then Selly Oak (1.5) and finally Birmingham New Street (1.7).
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Launching in March 2024 at Arnolfini, Hayward Gallery Touring’s major group exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood will plunge into the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through over 100 artworks, from the feminist avant-garde to the present day.

About

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.

Featuring the work of more than sixty modern and contemporary artists, this exhibition will approach motherhood as a creative enterprise, albeit one at times tempered by ambivalence, exhaustion or grief. Acts of Creation will explore lived experience of motherhood, offering a complex account that engages with contemporary concerns about gender, caregiving and reproductive rights.

The exhibition will address diverse experiences of motherhood across three themes: Creation, which looks at conception, pregnancy, birth and nursing; Maintenance which explores motherhood and caregiving in the day-to-day; and Loss, which touches on miscarriage and involuntary childlessness, as well as reproductive rights. The heart of the exhibition is a series of revelatory self-portraits – a celebration of the artist as mother. 

CuratorsToggle

Hettie Judah

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Felicity Allen

Billie Zangewa

Carmen Winant

Del Lagrace Volcano

Hermione Wiltshire

Carrie Mae Weems

Caroline Walker

barbara walker

Emma Talbot

Hannah Starkey

Tabitha Soren

Annegret Soltau

Monica Sjöö

Jenny Saville

Su Richardson

Paula Rego

Celia Paul

Fani Parali

Catherine Opie

Everlyn Nicodemus

Ishbel Myerscough

Wangechi Mutu

Sally Mann

Tala Madani

Mary Kelly

Claudette Johnson

Chantal Joffe

Susan Hiller

Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Camille Henrot

Ghislaine Howard

Ghislaine Howard

Maeve Gilmore

Valie Export

Jessa Fairbrother

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Catherine Elwes

Leni Dothan

Dorothy Cross

Renee Cox

Eileen Cooper

Lea Cetera

Elina Brotherus

Clare Bottomley

Bobby Baker

Cassie Arnold

Janine Antoni

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