MEAGHAN STEWART: MAKING THE BED
Vera Baxter
Essinge Brogata, 39, 11261
Söndag 8 December
4-7pm
Ring 0733497204
Let me tell you about my mother.
If I said the best place to start was very, very small would you mistake this for insignificance? In terms of literatures, a minoring of the major. Meanwhile, the cat caught her claws in the candlewick.
The impossibility of mums.
Sometimes we shared holidays. We sat at the front of the coach and both fell asleep watching the road. She said that life can also be wonderful, sometimes (her italics). She thinks warmly about them both. Now her eyes open wide on the hunt for something similar, for familiar stories in art, in writing and in film. There are not that many, right? And those that we encounter are merely theatrical, the Medeas and the Medusas, there in all their lurid glory. The hyper-controller, the ur-castrator, the witch of the place. ‘Good’ mother either saintly or invisible, but they write so white, of course, don’t they? Talking under the TV. Seen but not really noticed. Snow on the ice, hair on the fur. But listen closely because there they go, up the wooden hills, pausing on the top floor landing.
What would Sophie Calle do? (We were thinking about the title of her exhibition My mother, my cat, my father, in that order.) What would Chantal Akerman have done? Probably she would have spoken to her mum about it all. Sat down for a talk, shared a smoke and a coffee and a think. About all the imponderables. Then they would have gone off to their separate rooms, to watch telly or have a nap. The smell of home, its textures and the nature of what we talk about when we talk about gentle natures, which is not really that often these days, is it? At least not in such terms. Meanwhile, our friend Annabel wishes everyone a happy Mother’s Day on Instagram. For all mothers, she writes, those who miss their mother, those who never had them, those who would like to be a mother, those who had terrible mothers, those who have been mothers and are no longer, those who have gone through IVF to be a mother, stepmothers, single mothers, foster mothers, adoptive mothers, those who never wanted to be a mother. Happy day to us all.
Meaghan Stewart is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the everyday. She explores the intersection between memory, fiction and experience, drawing upon a mother-daughter relationship, women’s labour (seen and unseen) and the threshold between real and virtual; subverting home-making for world-building.