Bitch, Lover, Child, Mother

 “Gender roles in society means how we’re expected to act, speak, dress, groom and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex. For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing.  Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive and bold…A stereotype is a widely accepted judgement or bias about a person or group—even though it’s overly simplified and not always accurate. Stereotypes about gender can cause unequal and unfair treatment because of a person’s gender. This is called sexism.”                                         

  Planned Parenthood (USA)

In mining jargon, ‘finding the mother lode’ means you have struck it lucky by discovering a rich source vein of gold or silver. In their exhibition, The Mother Lode, Kelly McDonald and Victoria McIntosh play on this phrase to consider the loaded associations and expectations that accompany the word “mother”.

Their exhibition title is also an apt reference to their backgrounds in metalsmithing. Victoria reflects, “we both trained as contemporary jewellers, and while you could argue we are not making jewellery here, we are making a derivative of it. Our work has gone from the body as display mechanism to the body as subject.” She goes on to say, “we are using this title, The Mother Lode, as a point of connection, but we bring different perspectives. For instance, Kelly is a mother, while I’m not.” Victoria states this warmly as we sit together with their respective bodies of work. She is responding to my question about the artists’ decision to collaborate, and how they have brought their seemingly unrelated practices together in a visual conversation about the stereotypes that continue to befall women in spite of feminist thought and influence.

Their impetus to exhibit together came after both were invited to participate in the exhibition The Past that Supports the Present: Encounters between Contemporary Jewelry and the Museum’s Collections, at The Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico. The link the curators created between the artists was an inherent nod to material culture via their use of found objects. Reflecting on this, Kelly says:  “there is an intergenerational shift when an object from one period in history is highlighted now. Using found objects feels honest, because they come with a patina layered with their own stories. We are both interested in what happens when we build on these associations with personal experiences that have the potential to connect with others.”

I remember visiting Victoria’s studio in Dunedin in 2017 and seeing her cases full of 19th century foundation garments and girdles. I had a strong suspicion that my association with these items as feminine—but restrictive—curiosities was likely to be very different from the perspectives of the women who wore them. Victoria carefully translates her collections of underwear and purses into soft sculptures that remember the shapes of the bodies they once held: tracing their movements through life alongside their achievements and regrets. In The Mother Lode, perennial beige undergarments are quilted and appliqued with ovaries. The fabric works are accompanied by Victorian teapots, painted in the same beige colour, their spouts dismembered to reveal strainer holes—a reference to incontinence—while a lid is removed to show bristles that stand in for unwanted hair. As a group, the pieces covet the notion of women as vessels and all the tropes of this outmoded metaphor. Victoria is also conscious she is employing the crafting skills taught to her by her grandmother and mother to criticise the feminine examples they set for her, which ultimately she did not follow. A handheld mirror hangs higher than the rest of the works in her installation. Engraved with the word ‘mother’, it is placed so that only the impossibly tall can see themselves in it.

Having made a conscious decision not to become a mother, Victoria’s interest in working with the subject of motherhood stems from her experience of being adopted. “Using second hand items is important to me because they have marked histories that are closed to us. In New Zealand, the law can prevent adopted people from accessing their birth certificates until they are 20, and this was only made possible with a reform in 1985. In our culture, genealogy is valued and we are taught that blood is thicker than water. Yet when you are adopted, you are denied this aspect of your history. Our adoption laws were written in the 1950s and remain unchanged because they are too much of a political hot potato.”

Politics have begun to influence both artists’ practices, particularly the abortion law reforms in New Zealand, The United States and Ireland, which have echoed loudly in the media over the last year. While New Zealand is on the brink of decriminalising abortion, in the New Yorker, Mary Ziegler, Law Professor at Florida State University, wrote of recent changes to abortion laws in right-wing, conservative American states: “Why the sudden shift on rape and incest, and what does it mean? Fights about rape and incest exceptions expose deeply different ideas about the guilt and trustworthiness of women—and about how much popular opinion should dictate abortion politics.”

In response to this kind of rhetoric, Victoria’s intentions for her assemblages have shifted from representation to autonomy. Her teapots bare pregnant bellies—fulfilling a sacred, revered role expected of women—otherwise ‘empty vessels’—while an oversized, ovary decked panty girdle has purse attachments that open to reveal knitting needles, otherwise inert implements that have performed self-induced abortions.

While Victoria’s adoption and choice not to have children have influenced her practice, in contrast, Kelly’s latest installations are grounded in her role as a daughter and a mother. Up until recently, her work has reflected her sense of identity by referencing the industrial environment she lived in until her late teens. The artist became fascinated with making early in life and seeing limited options available for women—her mother was a housewife, while Kelly was encouraged to study teaching or nursing—she began to associate more with her father and the contents of his workshop.     

“I’ve been drawing predominantly from traditionally masculine spheres. But I’ve come to realise that this sits uneasily with my current reality of being a mother. Just as I physically move between my workshop and my home, so can my practice. I’ve started to contrast the found industrial objects I use with items from kitchens, bedrooms and lounges. I am considering the histories that mediate domestic spaces, alongside the burden that outdated, but still very real, gender roles place on women in the home”.

Playing with mainstream narratives of power and gender, Kelly created her Honeymoon Bangles. Each sporting a phallic-like protrusion, these bangles were given to participants who were invited to record their responses. Kelly then asked writer Kirsten McDougall to respond to these thoughts.  In her poem Marriage vows, lines like “I’ll wear you like toy soldiers marching up my arm to fuck me” and “I’ll wear you like a woman blaming another woman for a man’s bad behaviour” speak to the subtle, social inequalities women remain painfully aware of yet continue to face on a daily basis.

Kelly’s own response to the pro-life versus pro-choice debates manifest in a new series entitled DIY IUDs, where the potency of language and materials highlight her concerns about these heated perspectives. From a distance, each work looks remarkably like an enlarged version of the somewhat mechanical contraceptive device. However, when considering the pieces alongside their titles and media, a new agenda becomes apparent. Works such as Screwed (plumber’s sewer snake, brass kitchen drawer handle), Sponge (Goldilocks scourer, silver ball chain) and Tart (baking tin, copper wire) clearly combine found objects from masculine and feminine domains. Verging on ludicrous in their potential functionality, they bring to mind the idiom “it takes two to tango”, asking why men face so little responsibility when it comes to contraception.

While both artists deal with subjects that have indelibly altered the lives of millions of women, there is something tragically comic about Victoria’s sagging forms and broken teapots. In turn, describing her contribution to the plethora of historically unreliable contraceptives, Kelly says “you’d never actually stick one of those things up there.” Each uses humour as a mechanism to open up access to their work, for all the women who have suffered unnecessarily, their partners who don’t know how to support them and new generations who do not understand the shackles of the past.

For centuries, women have been placed into categories, then persuaded, bullied and groomed to perpetuate these typecasts through everything from religion and politics to pop culture. As I mulled over this unquestionably frustrating loop, I kept coming back to the chorus of Meredith Brooks’ now cringe-worthy 90s anthem:

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint
I do not feel ashamed

 Bitch is an ugly word. But here it sits equally with lover, child, mother, sinner and saint. Belting out these stereotypes in a feisty song is unusually empowering because it reminds me that humans are complex. In a similar way to Meredith, Kelly and Victoria prod at uncomfortable subject matters, which at first might make some of their audience feel embarrassed. However, using humour—as many women have learnt to do—and everyday objects we know intimately, they win us over: urging us and the people we love not to be ashamed, and to continue to seek to define ourselves on our own terms.

Bitch, Lover, Child, Mother was written in 2019 for artists Victoria Mc Intosh and Kelly McDonald to accompany their exhibition “The Motherload”, which was part of the contemporary jewellery bienale Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne, Australia.