Acts of Creation

Exploring maternity through the work of artists from prehistory to the present day, Acts of Creation addresses the abiding mother-shaped hole in art history.

While the Madonna and Child is one of the greatest subjects of European art, we rarely see art about motherhood as a lived experience. Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood addresses this blind spot in art history, asserting the artist mother as an important – if rarely visible – cultural figure.

Based on a major Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, Acts of Creation explores motherhood as a creative enterprise, albeit one at times tempered by ambivalence, exhaustion or grief.