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Yesterday was Sylvia Plath’s birthday. I picked up this information from social media somewhere and it played on my mind while in at the studio. Being reminded of Plath at this particular point feels pertinent as I’ve been thinking about motherhood a lot recently, both in personal and universal terms. Plath’s ‘Morning Song‘ poem must surely be one of the most powerful ever written on the very real experience of becoming a new mother. For me, re-reading it is a timely reminder of the massively complex nature of the mother/child union.

It’s now approaching the 7th week since my sons left for their respective university towns and I’m starting to feel the pull of wanting to see them again. It’s momentary and completely unpredictable, but when it comes, the yearning can be powerful and visceral. And of course, it’s all tangled up with the knowledge that both sons have been ready to leave the proverbial nest for some time and I’m keen to respect their wish for independence and autonomy. But that’s not to say that I have to deny how much I miss them at times.

The subconscious is a powerful thing – no surprise then, that the objects and images I’ve gravitated towards in the studio these past few weeks are associated with motherhood. A new body of work, ‘Babes in Arms’ has been developing gradually and as well as assembling objects together, I’ve been making short films on my phone of vintage photos of babies in the arms of adults.

Working with mother themed objects has also arisen in response to a beautiful ‘Mother’ brooch which was left by artist Paula Fenwick Lucas amid the 102 glass objects when she visited the ‘Neither Use Nor Ornament’ (NUNO) exhibition in Oxford in spring of this year. At the point Paula left it, I was getting excited about visiting both my sons, following on from a brief visit to Oxford for the launch of the NUNO exhibition.

Being ill last year significantly affected my role as their Mum: I was in hospital when my sons went to their respective new shared student accommodation and for several months, though I had their addresses on paper, I had no sense of where they were actually living. This year was different and I’m so grateful that I was able to be with them as they settled into their new homes and come away with a picture in mind of where they are.

I’m not sure where this latest work will take me but for now, I’m enjoying the process of making it, consciously slowing down the pace at which I would normally work and doing everything I can to ensure I stay as well as can be.


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But in the darkness of the night, what haunts us are not broken systems but the faces of the broken girls. So, so many. All the time.’  Suzanne Moore, The Guardian, 2015

 

I looked back on my blog posts recently and realised that it’s four and a half years since I wrote about the ceramic figurines that make up the work of  ‘Sweet Nothings.’ My intervention was to gag the mouths of the figurines with Elastoplast, demonstrating the way in which young girls and women are so often silenced and made to feel powerless. What struck me upon re-reading this post from 2015 is how pertinent it is – still.

 

The ‘Sweet Nothings’ ceramic figurines are set to make it back into the public eye again shortly. It seems pointless to write another blog post about them – nothing sums up the sentiments and high emotions around the subject of unsolicited exploitation of girls and young women more than the Suzanne Moore article, I feel. It coincided with making the work and Moore’s observations ring as true now, as they did then – a sad and uncomfortable truth.

 

From my blog post, March 2015:

‘Sweet Nothings‘ is a piece of work made up of small china female figurines. The figurines are of girls, not women – all bows & frills, sweet & subservient-looking in their stance; placed on a dressing table, faces turned to the mirror. It’s not obvious at a first glance, but all the mouths of the young girls are taped up – gagged and silenced by a strip of Elastoplast. Just like the girls and women Suzanne Moore discusses in her article, they have no voice.’

 

To read the entire post on my ‘Keeping It Going’ blog, click on link below:

https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/keeping-it-going-1/date/2015/03/

And to read Suzanne Moore’s full article, click here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/india-turkey-oxford-state-of-war-against-women-sexual-violence

 


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Split – definition:  divide, disunite, separate, sever, bisect, partition, tear asunder, cleave, rend

Last week I checked on the current state of ‘Bread and Roses’ , an ongoing piece of work which is encased and protected in a plastic box in my back garden.

I first laid fresh bread and roses on a wooden platter in 2015, in response to the election result of May that year. As the months and years have passed, and the effects of austerity have increasingly been felt, the bread has now completely disintegrated and the roses have all but gone, though their stalks are still intact.

More recently, a small crack that had formed on the side of the wooden platter has got bigger and developed into a definite split in the wood.

Just as the deterioration of the bread and roses reflects the shameful & neglectful impact of austerity, the split for me is symbolic of the deep economic, social and political divides that have worsened in this country over the past few years. Disagreements over Brexit are at the forefront of a great deal of the overall dissent felt by many, while cracks and divisions have grown deeper within the various political parties.

‘Bread and Roses’ has acted as a visual reminder of the consequences of neglect over the past four years and it’s been a fascinating process documenting its gradual decay and disintegration. I’m curious to see what will eventually happen to it and while there’s sufficient space in the garden, I’ll hold onto it – continue to monitor the changes and keep an eye on the split, too.


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A personal response to Refugee Week, June 2019 …

‘Refugee Week takes place every year across the world in the week around World Refugee Day on the 20 June. In the UK, Refugee Week is a nationwide programme of arts, cultural and educational events that celebrate the contribution of refugees to the UK, and encourages a better understanding between communities.

Refugee Week started in 1998 as a direct reaction to hostility in the media and society in general towards refugees and asylum seekers. An established part of the UK’s cultural calendar, Refugee Week is now one of the leading national initiatives working to counter this negative climate, defending the importance of sanctuary and the benefits it can bring to both refugees and host communities.’

(from the International Awareness Events website)

‘WELCOME’  by Kate Murdoch 2019

I made a new piece of work at the weekend, in response to World Refugee Day and Refugee Week which ended this year, on Sunday, June 23rd.

I headed for a specific piece of coastline, Winchelsea Beach, in East Sussex which is significant to me for more than one reason.

It’s a place I’m very familiar with as my parents bought a caravan close to the beach some 30 years or so ago. I’ve been a frequent visitor to the area ever since and love the remote bleakness of this particular stretch of coast.

Two summers ago, I had a short exchange with a man I met on a morning walk, close to the caravan site where I stay. I commented on seeing a police car making its way down a fairly inaccessible lane, towards the beach, in the direction we were both walking. I said what an unusual sight it was, in what is a relatively crime-free corner of the world. The man simply replied: ‘immigrants.’ His aggression took me by surprise and when I asked what he meant, he went into a tirade about immigrants landing in boats ‘all along the East Sussex coast’ – ‘coming here, living off our land, claiming our benefits, etc etc’. He was full of anger and certainly very sure of his opinion, to the point that I was slightly nervous about voicing mine. But I felt I needed to speak out for what I believed in and told him how sad I thought it was; how utterly desperate people must be to put themselves and their children at such risk and how, crucially, after experiencing such trauma in their lives, they should be welcomed with open arms. The conversation ended there, thankfully and the man grunted and sloped off – we were clearly at complete odds with our opinions.

Albeit brief, this conversation stayed with me for a long time. I’d seen opinions like this expressed on TV, but had never actually been face to face with someone who felt so strongly about ‘his’ land, ‘his’ taxes and so full of fear about ‘the immigrants taking over’ and getting their hands on anything that belonged to him. The idea of laying down WELCOME mats to welcome refugees arriving in boats on the shoreline came to me at the point of being confronted with this seething ball of anger. This week, I finally managed to make the work that’s been buzzing around for such a long time.

Ironically, one of the things that spurred me into action was a recent news report that a small group of refugees did actually land on the very stretch of coast I know so well. I only wish the WELCOME mats had been there to greet them.


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It’s over a month since the show was taken down, but presenting the ‘102 Pieces of Glass’ installation work as part of the ‘Neither Use nor Ornament’ (NUNO) exhibition has left me with lots to think about – and not least how, after a recent successful second cataract operation, my vision is so much better! That in itself, has pre-occupied a lot of my thoughts. Looking back at photographs I took in preparation for the show and at the huge bold text I needed in order to be able to access anything on my laptop, reminded me just how poor my eyesight was, pre-taking my work to the OVADA gallery in Oxford. I’m so glad that, despite all the ill health of the past year and the challenges it presented, I managed to make it. As so often happens, completing one piece of work leads to creating ideas for another – nothing stands alone, as we know. Creative work can take on all sorts of other dimensions once it makes its way into the world – in relation to the environment it’s placed in, for example – to other work around it, and in relation to the audience that responds to it.

My art practice focuses on objects and in this case, I presented 102 of them, all made of glass, and each one representative of a year of my late Nana’s life. Glass in itself is a fragile material and reminded me of my own fragility and immortality, particularly in light of spending a rather surreal two weeks of last August, seriously ill in hospital.

It made me also think about how amazing it is that, despite its delicacy, so much of the glass that once belonged to my Nana has survived – how carefully she looked after the things she owned, keeping them safe for future generations. So many of the glass objects were from the everyday and used to present food in the best possible way: jelly moulds, milk jugs, sugar bowls – various foods were taken from their original packaging and carefully placed onto glass plates, into bowls and condiment sets. So much more washing up, admittedly, but the food looked lovely on the table – such care taken with the presentation of it, so that even the simplest menu looked appealing & sumptuous .

One of the dishes singled out by artist, Jenni Dutton was reminiscent of the sort her grandmother ‘always served beetroot in.’ Jenni and I spoke about the reverence around Sunday tea time in the past – best china and glass from the cabinet and no sign of the plastic supermarket packaging or jars on the table – heaven forbid! Maybe it was the years my Nana dedicated to working in domestic service that instilled these habits in her – ensuring that she took great care and applied the same high standards for her family as she did for the lord and lady she served (and yes, the lord & lady references are for real!) Pristine, white starched table clothes, polished, glittering glass & cutlery – a real sense of pride associated with the way she ‘kept house.’

Strong associations with grandmothers and older (particularly female) relatives was a common theme in the conversations I had with people who connected with the 102 glass objects – hardly surprising as so much of the installation was made up of domestic objects from the 1930s onwards. Certainly, for the majority of my Nana’s life time, a woman’s place was primarily, in the home.

I still miss visiting my Nana’s home in the small Cambridgeshire village where she resided for well over 70 years of her long-lived life and often find myself reflecting on her simple but seemingly contented existence; how so much of her life was based around domestic tasks and how hard she worked within the confines of her home. I don’t recall ever getting a sense from her that she considered housework a drudge, but what I do recall is how sparkling clean her home was. I also know that my Mum, the eldest daughter of my Nana’s six children, took on a large share of the housework; that it was expected of her as a daughter, she has told me many times, while her brothers in her words, were ‘completely let off the hook.’ All these years later, you can still detect a hint of resentment in her voice, whenever she speaks of it.

My late Nana has inspired a great deal of the work I’ve made over the years and I’m so grateful to own a number of bits and pieces that were once a part of her life. They provide me with a lot of the raw material for my work and, as our thoughts and feelings are inseparable in relation to the things that surround us, frequently open up opportunities for personal and political discussion. I’m fascinated by these conversations – they’re my prime motivation behind inviting audience participation into my work. The 102 glass pieces in this installation reflect historical & social themes, as well as personal & universal ones – of love and loss, mourning and memory – transition and the passage of time. For me personally, many of the objects in the installation evoke a strong sense of time and place – nostalgic memories of a 1960s childhood, filled with love and security and a sense of truly valuing what we had. They made me think particularly about the different generations associated with the glass pieces – grandmothers and great aunts, cousins & siblings – domesticity and family and my own position within the changing role of women in the home throughout the years.

All this recent thinking around the ‘102 Pieces of Glass’ work is timely: this coming Saturday, I’m going to visit the village of Weston Colville in Cambridgeshire, where my Nana was born. It’s been a while since I’ve been there and I’m looking forward to visiting the village church (St Mary’s) with my Mum and other relatives to see the annual flower show. St. Mary’s is where my Nana was christened, married and finally, laid to rest in her 102nd year. It’s also the church in which my Mum, herself was christened and married. Numerous family christenings, weddings and funerals have taken place in this church over the years and I’m looking forward to being there again on Saturday, soaking up the history and continuing to find inspiration for ongoing work around my much loved late Nana, Olive Mary Taylor (b 1908 d 2010).


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