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A composite of 4 images: a photocollage of a woman sat atop a washing machine /  babies bottles on a draining rack / a woman in high heels surrounded by toys, a newborn in a white babygrow A woman with a small child beside her carries shopping bags through the snow using a poll across her shoulders

VALIE EXPORT, Die Geburtenmadonna, 1976 © VALIE EXPORT _ Bildrecht, Wien 2023, Caroline Walker, Bottles and Pumps, 2022, Courtesy the artist, Billie Zangewa, Every Woman, 2017, Photo: Jurie Potgieter, Chantal Joffe, Esmee (First Painting), 2004

Hannah Starkey, Untitled, February 2013, 2013

Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood

Thu 24 October 2024 - Sun 19 January 2025

Millennium Gallery

'Mystery, profundity, love, grief and amazement: not a work in this show achieves anything less.'

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Guardian 

 

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. 

Read the Guardian review here 

 

Guidance for visitors:

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. 

Free Entry | Please Donate

Opening Times

Tue–Sat 10am–5pm

Sun 11am–4pm

***The Ruskin Collection will be closed for redisplay from Sun 1 Dec and reopen on Sat 21 Dec 2024***

Millennium Gallery

Arundel Gate

Sheffield

S1 2PP

A black and white photograph of a woman eating macarons on a bed, whilst a teenage girl irons clothes in the background.

Anna Grevenitis, Regard series (2015 -).

© Anna Grevenitis

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