We finish up on the ground floor of the Photographers’ Gallery, watching the huge screen above the stair well. It is showing a sequence of hundreds of different images of motherhood which collectively carry the title Motherlode. The gallery website says ‘Drawing on historical archives, stock images, contemporary media and the world wide web, the display reflects changes in the representation of motherhood through the history of photography and wider visual culture.’
Our eldest enjoys the magazine cover images of expectant celebrity mothers: high fashion bumps. She hasn’t imbibed quite enough celebrity culture to recognize any faces (apart from Victoria Beckham’s), but she responds to the particular finish of these women. Something about their gloss, the sheen they project for the camera, allows their images to slip frictionless across the huge screens. They are in their element.
Another set of images within Motherlode seem more dense, more abrasive. These are the images of Victorian babies. At first they seem to be sitting on oddly shaped and heavily upholstered chairs. The essay by Home Truth’s curator Susan Bright points out that it is not upholstery, but hidden maternity: each baby is sitting on its mother’s lap yet their mother is hidden, entirely covered head to toe, with a cloth giving the illusion that the baby is independent. Bright says that one of these ‘hidden mother’ images, together with a piece by artist Mary Kelly, were the two works that ‘gave birth to this exhibition.’
Our visit to Home Truths at the Photographers’ Gallery (this was back in December, see earlier posts for more detail) started at the top and worked down. After the Katie Murray film on the top floor we went down one floor to the Lower Gallery. The first work was a large photo of a woman’s body immediately after birth. Only her torso is shown. Her breasts are full, her belly is slack and a freshly stitched scar shows the delivery was by Caesarian.
A little further into the exhibition space was a sign saying SOME WORK IN THIS GALLERY IS OF AN EXPLICIT NATURE (or words to that effect). H and M are not perturbed seeing the extreme effects of birth on the female body. We felt confident that EXPLICIT wouldn’t worry them. One of us hurried ahead anyway into the main body of the exhibition space.
The image which earned the warning sign was Mom on Top of Boyfriend (2002) by Leigh Ledare. It is part of a series of photos and other material exploring his relationship with his mother. It shows her naked astride a man’s face. His tongue, straining to lick her vagina, appears unusually large.
H and M were already hurrying anticlockwise round the walls, delivering a quick verdict on each image: She’s sad. Look at her hair. Are those things, those coloured things, … what are they? That one’s boring.
We felt we had no time to decide what to do. Telling H and M to go out again would provoke questions from both of them, and probably an argument with H. We dithered a few more seconds. As H and M approached Mom on Top of Boyfriend one of us stood in front with jacket spread open like a man shielding his wife as she changes on the beach. The other accompanied H and M. M hardly noticed. She couldn’t see the photo that was being obscured so she simply moved on to the next. H, on the other hand, was immediately both interested and suspicious. She asked why we were blocking her view. We said we didn’t want her to see the image. She shifted and managed to catch a glimpse. ‘That’s disgusting’ she exclaimed.
Our drawing of a clay object made by our middle child.
A drawing made when our third child had just given up breast feeding.
Young children are kinesthetic learners. They think by moving. They learn by touching and pushing and hearing the sound things make when they’re dropped or knocked over.
Taking young children to a gallery can be a trial for all concerned. The very methods by which children learn about their surroundings are prohibited. The children are frustrated, the invigilators are tense, and the parents are trying hard to protect the artwork. The frustration can be redoubled with contemporary sculpture where part of the game is to use a given material in an unusual or deceptive fashion: Roger Hiorns’ car engines encrusted with copper sulphate, Katherina Grosse’s spray painted mounds of soil, Anish Kapoor’s huge pigment-covered bowls.
Home Truths was less challenging than most exhibitions. The photographic work was mostly hung above child height. And anyway there were no invigilators.
