Alternative Maternals

A new exhibition, Alternative Maternals, brings together an international group of female artists to examine motherhood from a variety of angles for an engaging, provocative show at London Southbank University. The exhibition will be held at the London South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, London SE1 0AA, and run from June 1 to June 8, with a private view 1 June 1, 6.30–8.30 P.M. Gallery hours for the show are Wednesday–Friday 1pm to 5pm and Saturday 12pm to 5pm. Dr Laura González, artist and lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art, curated the The seven artists of Alternative Maternals use a variety of media, including performance, photography, video, and sculptural objects to investigate the maternal experience from a variety of perspectives. Each artist’s work uniquely challenges, in its own way, the common characteristics by which maternal expressions are known. In doing so, the exhibition raises issues of absence, rejection, memory, legacy, scandal, autonomy, and the physical body. The artists challenge the language associated with maternity through intimate, in-depth investigations of this essential bond. Their work questions cultural dismissals of the mother as a valid anchor for artistic expression, while embracing a conceptual artistic framework and rejecting tendencies toward simplifying the meaning of motherhood and mother/child relationships. Alternative Maternals offers provocative insights into becoming, being and having a mother. The maternal experience emerges as it has rarely been seen before in the work of the exhibit’s artists to reveal what we have too long taken for granted