I have been researching more adoption information since the completion of this year’s semester and the subject is so broad it is difficult to stay on a particular track; although I will have to at some point.
I have been reading about the trauma of forced adoption and the endless repercussions. With this in mind I have found it useful to work on a series of small projects in order to process some of the information I have gleaned.
For example, I have looked at a website written and produced by Rose Bell who shares her research on mother and baby homes in the mid twentieth century. http://www.motherandbabyhomes.com/. Rose writes about what life was like in the homes as well as quoting some of the mothers personal stories. The homes Bell refers to are not the infamous homes run by nuns, but nevertheless they convey the torment and guilt many of the young unmarried mothers suffered as a result of being inside them. Bell states; ‘I feel so honoured to bear witness to these stories, and hope that by sharing them others can develop a greater understanding for an historical phenomenon which continues to have a very real impact on women and their children today.’
These stories are still current and the pain continues as mothers search for their children and children search for their birth mothers. But at the same time there are mothers who would rather wipe the memory from their lives and so they shun all contact with the children they gave away for adoption.
1950s and 60s images of nursery/hospital cots lined up containing babies inspired me to make miniature cots… 20 in all, made with matchsticks and card to correspond in size to the miniature babies I had used for the chocolate box.
The single baby suggests the one baby left at the hospital or home and awaiting adoption.
For me, a painting evolves over a period of time because I like to test new ideas by experimenting with different techniques on the surface of the canvas. For example, I covered acrylic painted surface of the canvas with white tissue paper, and painted the ‘seed’ a red/brown, but decided to change it to white because it blended in with the background.
The ‘veins’ of the seed are left unpainted, exposing the surface colour. The veins surrounding the seed are a mix of glue and acrylic paint.
The work measured 100x80cm is based on my macro image of the autumnal skeletal physalis flower.
I am considering how a human life begins with a seed…
After birth, the baby being placed for adoption is separated from her mother …the bond is broken…the blood that connected them drains away…
More miniature babies arrived to crochet blankets for, to fill the spaces where chocolates would, inside the triangular chocolate box.
The process of making gives me time to think and evaluate. At the moment I quite a few ideas on my adoption theme and several pieces of work started and I keep working across them a little at a time.
I have been reading about Steve Hydes who in 1986 was nicknamed Gary Gatwick because he had been found abandoned at the airport. He has no documentation or knowledge of his origins and is still searching for his family. What particularly interested me was the items found with him at the time. He was wearing 2 babygrows, one blue, one yellow and he was wrapped in a blue and white checked blanket.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/09/gatwick-baby-abandoned-1986
I have also been reseraching the ‘tokens’ left behind by mothers who left their babies and children in the care of the Foundling Hospital in London. Here are a few examples which are now in the Foundling Museum:
http://www.culture24.org.uk/search%20results?q=fate%2C+hope+and+charity+tokens+left+by
I have also been looking at my birth certificates. The first one was issued when I was born and the second one when I was adopted. I made copies of them, covered vital information and then shredded them. I decided to randomly glue the strips together and then used one of the ‘negative’ cut-out puzzle pieces I made for ‘The Ties that Bind’ to frame the striped surface.
This work signifies the dual identity of the person on the birth certificate and questions the person’s identity.
The work for the collaboration with the Level 5 English Students which is due to be exhibited in May is now complete. I had to modify ‘Best Friends’ because I misread the essay at the start (by reading it too quickly) and misinterpreting it which was slightly embarrassing (and funny) I am unable to divulge the content but I found a satisfactory way around it and here is the result.
Picking up again on my main theme I am developing an idea from looking at the website of the Foundling Museum in London. Mothers of abandoned babies would often leave small objects with their babies as a means of identification should they ever return to the Foundling Hospital to claim their child, sometimes they had tied tiny scraps of cloth to the baby.
I bought a pack of miniature plastic babies and knitted tiny blankets for each (crochet).
So far I have knitted eight in white and one in pink to represent the nine months of labour, the pink one represents a baby girl singled out for adoption.
This painting which was exhibited at the Foundling Museum entitled ‘The Fallen Woman’ (Sept 2015 – January 2016).
‘The Outcast’ by Richard Redgrave (1851)
In this painting ‘a stern patriarch evicts his daughter and her illegitimate baby into literal cold, for snow falls beyond the threshold. A brother buries his head to weep while various sisters cry and plead with their father, but to no avail. On the floor there lies what appears to be an incriminating letter, and on the wall hangs a didactic print which seemingly reinforce the drama, perhaps that of Abraham casting out Hagar and Ishamael, or Christ and the woman taken in adultery.’
Redgrave’s painting of this popular Victorian subject, which in the twentieth century came to embody a heartless and puritanical Victorian attitude toward sexuality…’ George P Landow
http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/redgrave/paintings/4.html
I am sending for another pack of babies as I thought of another idea for them. Remember one of the many Forrest Gump quotes? ‘My mamma always said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get’.
I was given a box of chocolates at Christmastime which reminded me of the adoption triangle…more on this another time.
Setting up a website for the Professional Practice module has been another learning curve, taking into account my limited computer skills. However, having grasped the basics I have found it to be a great way of reviewing my practice and in considering how it has changed and developed over the past five years. The direction and themes have varied because they have reflected my interest in combining materials with nature. When I started writing my dissertation on ‘Defamiliarisation’ in the first semester it reflected my practice, only in the sense that I examined the work of artists who presented everyday objects in a new way. However, I have been aware for a while that my practice is lacking something; a consistent theme; something that pulls it all together; that something that is uniquely ‘ME’.
One subject which has been regularly in my thoughts is where do ‘I’ fit into my work. Unlike Tracey Emin I have no desire to make art about me, but the more I thought about it I realised that I had already made work about relationships and my adoption and identity is a continuation of this theme because it is about people and how we make relationships work or otherwise.
Naively, it never occurred to me at the start of the course that I would be finding out about ‘me’. Overall, the one big surprise in my practice has been my installation work; in ‘Exposure’ I looked at the theme of human frailties and the response of individuals to emotional and physical pain, tragedy and kindness. The juxtaposition of wood and other materials created dialogue which led to the beginning of my current theme of adoption and family relationships.
In 2002 critic Rosemary Betterton writing about Tracey Emin refers to her work as ‘self-life-drawing’ because she includes her own body and experiences in her work and as she points out this ‘poses questions about the relationship between representation, lived experience and the construction of self in art.’ (Betterton, R 2002 The Art of Tracey Emin.
In ‘How It Feels’ (1996) a documentary style film, Emin recounts the events of her abortion by showing the locations of specific events leading up to it.
This links to an interview in 2012 where Emin discusses why she made the film.
http://whitecube.com/channel/in_the_museum/on_how_it_feels_2012/
Thinking about this film has raised my interest in making a film about what I know of my past…
