Art of being mother-artist

Here is the text we made together with Helen Sargeant. In the Tampere art association magazine Täydellinen Ympyrä it will be but shorter. Helen was a big help to me while writing this text. I think it is also very important to share to public in Tampere, as practice of Helen is different that people are used to, and as her artist talk only reach part of the people who was interested of it. Photos are taken by Helen and also published in her own blog.

So here you are:

In Year 2014 UK artist Nicola Smith took part in two weeks artist residency in Finland with her 6-month-old child and with her husband. She recognised that biggest part of the residences are just for individual artists and in very few it is possible to take partner or child with. Nicola Smith started to create a residency, which would be meant specially to those artists who have not possibilities to participate normal residencies. We Are Resident –project is realised together with Tampere art association, Islington Mill Salford, Great Manchester and it is funded by Arts Council England

Helen and Naoise Sargeant have been in Tampere in We Are Resident – family residency that is created by Nicola smith. They spent two weeks in September in Takahuhti artist house. Helen says that her residency was a 14 day performance piece about caring for her son researching play, art, collaboration, education and finding out about artist/parents in Tampere. Did they face the same challenges as an artist/parents in the UK?

Before Helen and Naoise arrived to Finland We were writing to each other and I looked very much forward to meet them. With Helen we planned to meet at city centre on Friday 9.9, we pass by children’s culture centre Rulla and some flea markets and continue to my home to bake. Plan includes of course Helen’s artist co-worker seven years old Naoise and my two and four year old sons.

Baking seems to be an important element for Helen in her mother –artist –art. Before we met, she sent me real handwritten letter in which she hoped that we could bake together ”reikäleipä” – I proposed to make cardamom bread as I don’t know so well the secrets of the levan of bread. Baking is an important symbol of motherhood. Also in Finland we speak of  ”bun smelling mother” as a synonym for good mother.

I watched Internet site of Helen and I found a performance, that Helen have made at may 2016. Dust Bread was exhibited as part of the exhibition Artist As Mother As Artist at the Lace Street Gallery, Nottingham. As part of this project she worked with the public to make dust bread. She cooked dust bread with small groups. The groups included parents and children and mothers. Each of them baked bread from the dust in their Hoovers.

Actually she has made dust bread already at 2013 from the dust of her own family: cat and human hair, dead skin, lost Lego pieces etc.

Helen tells about that: “I made dust bread in 2013, when Naoise was small, before he went to Nursery School. I was interested in what artwork I could make from within the situation that I found myself to be. My days were primarily taken up with childcare, housework and managing the home. I had little money to buy art materials and I found it difficult to get to work at the studio without any access to childcare. Dust bread was about turning household waste into art. Caring for a child and domestic work in the home is often undervalued in society. I wanted to make the accumulative waste of our family that had come from our bodies and from our activities in the home into something of importance and beauty. I was also interested in making a subversive piece of work. I am interested in challenging idea of the "good mother” . In my work there is an attempt to reveal the reality and complexities of my work as a mother. The dust bread is disgusting, dirty and grey but it rises and cooks in the oven and is transformed into a beautiful loaf.”

Things don’t go always like planned. Naoise was tired and struggling with meeting new people and being away from his home and after some turnings and curvy road with a bus we ended up to Takahuhti art house instead. There I had change to see, what kind of subjects Naoise and Helen are working with.

Helen describes her art: “The work that I am interested in making visible is care work and domestic work. In Britain today it is women who still do the majority of care and domestic work. My work is political in that I am highlighting that this is still an issue, and prevents many women from reaching their potential in the labour market or that they are unable to work outside the home. Care work mainly goes on inside the home where it is unseen. Ideally the work that parents do would be more equitable.”

Actually in the work of Helen and Naoise single piece of art is not as remarkable as the method.

At Takahuhti studio floor were a mixture of art and play. Helen told me: "I have left invitations to make, to play, to draw, to perform in the house and in the studio. By invitations I mean materials and equipment that Naoise can easily access.  Within my practice there is no delineation between art and life. Being a mother both informs and inspires my arts practice. In my work there is an attempt to extend my caring and creative actions into the work of an artist. Collaborating with Naoise is such an attempt. However sometimes creative strategies to collaborate don't work. For example Naosie was not interested in the junk modelling table but he did like to play in the studio. He drew on my nightie and in his sketchbook and enjoyed building a train track and bouncing a ball in the space.” 

From UK they have take with them for art material some bedclothes and nightdress made of linen. That and wooden railway composed a piece of art.

When we visited them, sculpture hasn’t yet found its final form and it was even taken off for children could play with trains.

With Naoise Helen made also some smart phone drawings during the residency  The Phoneix, Smart Phone Drawing, Naoise Sargeant, Takahuhti, 2016, 2/ Riding the Reindeer, Helen and Naoise Sargeant, Smart Phone Drawing.

Helen told me that their method to work is very similar as at their home and also Naoise enjoys making work alongside her at the studio.

The blog of Helen was the main piece of work at the residency. http://helensargeant.co.uk/motherandson/.  Although Naoise wasn’t interested in posting work himself, Helen made an effort to ensure that his work was represented via the blog. The blog takes the form of an on-line diary. Autobiographical and reflective, critical writing is a part of Helen's practice. 

The residency was informed by Lea Lublin's extraordinary performance (Mon Fils), 1968, in which where she cared for her baby each day during the hours of an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Helen says: ”I saw the residency as a 14 day durational performance piece between myself and Naoise. Me and Naoise looking after each other ad collaborating to make this piece of art work that was about care and play.”

Already 20 years ago. Prior to her first son Syd being born, She made work about the female body. Mince Her is a painting of a pregnant woman that she made during a residency on the site of an old hospital. The painting of the pregnant woman is a ghost a tribute to the women who were incarcerated on the site who had children but were not married. This was socially unacceptable in Victorian Britain. To paint Mince Her she used x-rays and medical notes and information that I had found on-site.

Same themes have interest her during her artistic career.  For example she made drawings about her pregnancy and about giving birth 2009.

Helen tells: Don’t scribble me out is a self-portrait from the year 2015. It depicts me as both mother and child. It sticks together two moments in time. It plays with ideas within my wider practice that are concerned with maternal ambivalence, vulnerability and the affect of the transition into motherhood on a woman’s identity. It is about the child that still lives inside, a child learning to mother or a child that has become trapped. It’s about loss and a yearning for freedom, independence, a life before. It utilises a family photograph taken by my father in 1973 in which you can see I am happily balanced on top of my mother’s shoulders. The felt tip pen drawing that I have carefully traced around, cut out and superimposed on top of the photographic image is by my son who was aged 4 when he drew it. In the drawing I am depicted shouting, you can see that my mouth is wide open. Marks from the drawing obliterate parts of my mothers face. I have scribbled her out.

I am interested in how lines can transmute feelings. When scribbling out my mothers face I was in fact thinking about my own invisibility as a mother and full time carer of a young child. I thought that the drawing by my son was really fascinating as it captured the sense of frustration and isolation that I felt whilst looking after him at home. I am silently shouting out or screaming from within the drawing. My voice is seen but not heard.

The title of this artwork comes from my mother’s reaction to the work when she first viewed it. She felt upset by the image I had made and said please don’t scribble me out!”

When being pregnant of his second son Naoise she started to think how she could connect the art and the motherhood. Helen found out that being a parent could be isolating and that’s why started to build networks around the things she was making research of. She felt that voices of the mothers left often unheard and that their stories should become told and their art to be seen.

She began to make research of artists, who were dealing with the subject. She created an on-line community for artist mothers with the name The Egg The Womb The Head and The Moon. The egg, the womb, the head and the moon was an online, interdisciplinary, collaborative arts project that that lasted for nine months (42 weeks) –a time frame that purposefully mirrors that of the duration of pregnancy. The site contained moving and powerful art and texts by artists, performers, photographers, academics and poets exploring a diverse range of subjects about the maternal.

MeWe was born when Helen and Mo Brown, intercultural psychotherapist, met on a park bench whilst watching their children play. MeWe – art about maternal is a peer support group for mothers, - visual artists, academics, writers, performers, poets and film makers- who also wanted to discuss their parenting and art making. They met once a month at someone’s home.

With her method of working Helen is connecting art, care work, domestic work, and play. She doesn’t make work in spite of her responsibilities of being a mother it is about being a mother and an artist. About how to do both?