Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document: Documentation VI, Prewriting Alphabet, Exergue and Diary, 1978, is included in Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood at Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham. The exhibition has travelled from Arnolfini, Bristol, and will continue on to Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, and Dundee Contemporary Arts.
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood observes the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through over 100 artworks, from the feminist avant-garde to the present day.
Featuring the work of more than sixty modern and contemporary artists, this exhibition approaches motherhood as a creative enterprise, albeit one at times tempered by ambivalence, exhaustion or grief. Acts of Creation explores lived experience of motherhood, offering a complex account that engages with contemporary concerns about gender, caregiving and reproductive rights.
Post-Partum Document is a six-year exploration of the mother-child relationship. When first exhibited in London in Kelly’s solo exhibition at the ICA in 1976, the work provoked tabloid outrage for incorporating a series of stained nappy liners in the installation. Each of the six-part series concentrates on a formative moment in her son’s mastery of language and her own sense of loss, moving between the voices of the mother, child and analytic observer. Informed by feminism and psychoanalysis, the work has had a profound influence on the development and critique of conceptual art.
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham: 22 June – 29 September 2024
Millennium Gallery, Sheffield: 24 October 2024 – 21 January 2025
Dundee Contemporary Arts: Spring 2025
