Woman Up‪!‬ Amy Dignam and Susan Merrick

For our first ‘physical' On Tour episode we travelled to the Phoenix in Exeter to meet the amazing Lizzy Humber producer, artist, mother and co artistic director of the amazing Mothers Who Make movement. 
At the table with us we invited two artists who have been supported and empowered by the project, Amy Adkin and Dr. Kate Massey-Chase.
We also hosted live performances by spoken word artists Laura Free and Micha Colombo. 
Mothers Who Make is a growing international movement for women and non binary people who care about creating, and create whilst caring. 
Through a range of peer support meetings, artistic events and innovative projects they aim to support women and non-binary people to sustain their creative identities whilst also holding caring roles.

For more information https://motherswhomake.org/exeter

In this episode we talk to artist and founder of A.M.M.A.A (The Archive for Mapping Mother Artists in Asia) Ruchika Wason Singh along two other wonderful artists Alka Mathur  and Aparajita Jain Mahajan . 

A.M.M.A.A. simply means mother. It is also a space, for mapping mother artists in Asia and their art practice. A.M.M.A.A. is an initiative by Indian artist Ruchika Wason Singh, to document the different aspects of their art making and its possible  relations with motherhood .  https://www.ammaathearchive.com/about


Alka Mathur is a visual artist who works with mixed media. She is an alumna of the Sir J.J School of Art, Mumbai, India. Her artistic practice entails mental reconstructions articulated as assemblages on fabric, paper and cloth. Using natural dyes, earth pigments and found objects, Alka strives to blur the line between traditional and contemporary. Nature plays a significant role in the artist’s work. The contours and cracks of the parched land of her home Rajasthan, have always found their way into her relationship with material - the rustic, frayed edges which are worked over but never refined. She photographs nature and then interrupts their easy or direct readings by abstracting them into compositions of lines, planes, textures and symbols. Earth, matter and the divine feminine energy are themes which inspire and permeate her practice. The kantha or running stitch is an integral motif, representing the meditative, repetitive process analogous to the everyday rituals of women reworking old pieces of cloth. Her more recent assemblages use tea bags and tea stains on handmade paper, on which she writes a daily journal. These works are both anecdotal and autobiographical - incorporating ordinary, everyday happenings where the artist presents herself in fragments, while also encouraging the viewer to become a participant. https://www.instagram.com/alka_mathur_art/
https://alkamathur.com

Aparajita Jain Mahajan is an abstract mixed-media artist. Through her painting, drawing, and sewing, she investigates interactions between seen and unseen forms and energies, while creating emotive topographies. The feelings of passage of time, pausing to reflect, following footprints, discovering pathways, and occupying a location are visually explored through her works. Her work rises out of flat surfaces and journeys through three-dimensional space. Aparajita has focused on her art practice while simultaneously undertaking social projects. She created animations for the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum in New Delhi and assisted film maker Saeed Mirza in his tribute to Gandhiji in 2004. While Living in Auroville, a universal township, she taught art in an outreach village school and made a documentary about this special school.  Since 2009, Aparajita has exhibited her artwork at solo, two-person, and group shows.  ‘The Line in Between’ at the Alliance Francaise, 2012 and ‘Interactions’ at the habitat centre, 2016 in New Delhi, India were some of these exhibitions. In 2020, she debuted her textile artwork as an installation ‘Tracing Memories’ in the RISD alumni show at the India Art Fair.
In 2022, as part of the “Taking.Up.Space” initiative by the Thrive Together Network, Aparajita, co-created a virtual exhibition "Attachment; Abbreviated”  featuring materials that were shared, swapped, and changed between artists in opposite ends of the world. https://www.instagram.com/aparajita_atot/
https://www.aparajitajainmahajan.com

Spilt Milk Gallery CIC is a social enterprise based in Edinburgh whose mission is to support the work of artists who identify as mothers, and to empower mothers in our community through artist-led activities. 
They support and advocate for artists mothers through an international membership network, an online and pop-up exhibitions programme, peer support, mentoring and professional development opportunities. They support mothers and families in the local community through creative workshops and family friendly events. 
(The term ‘mother’ is used inclusively to represent women, non-binary parents and trans women with life-long caring responsibilities.)

Lauren McLaughlin graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2012, and MA Applied Arts & Social Practice from Queen Margaret University Edinburgh in 2021. Lauren’s work has been exhibited throughout the UK and Europe including at the Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh, The Whitworth Manchester, Lights of Soho London and Palazzo Albrizi Venice. Her work is held in permanent public collections and she has been published in a number of books and journals including An Artist and A Mother (Demeter Press), OVER Journal (Photo Ireland), Milked Mag, and Wordpower: Language as Medium (Library X). Lauren’s practice has been publicly funded by Creative Scotland, King’s College Cultural Institute, The Hope Scott Trust and most recently, Magnetic North Theatre’s Seed Fund. Lauren is also the founding director of Spilt Milk Gallery CIC.
http://www.laurenmclaughlin.co.uk


Michelle Gallagher is a multidisciplinary artist, who’s practice encompasses sculpture, printing and drawing. She completed her diploma in sculpture from Limerick school of art in Ireland. After gaining her Art & Design teaching qualifications, she followed her dream of going to Africa, and travelled to Botswana in 1997 to work as an art educator and artist. Traveling and working in Africa was inspiring, and it was in Botswana that she was involved in her first exhibitions. Michelle returned to Ireland in 2000 and finished the final year of her BA in fine art sculpture, from Limerick. Michelle has worked as an artist and educator, firstly in Ireland and Botswana, then Eastern Europe and Asia before settling in Germany. Her work has been exhibited Internationally. 
She is a member of the Scottish based Spilt Milk Gallery, and has had the opportunity to be part of the curatorial team for some of their recent exhibitions. Michelle joined the BBK Kunstforum Düsseldorf in 2021 and is currently working within the board curating and helping organize the community.
http://www.michellegallagher.online

Pauline de Souza is the founder and director of Diversity Art Forum. She is a writer and is Senior Lecturer in the Visual Arts Cluster, Fine Art Department at the University of East London,  She, is the programmer for Cultural Manoeuvres at the University of East London and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Pauline is involved in the Beacon Collective and sits on the TATE British Artists Network Steering Group. She has written for Feminist Visual Culture, Women Artists and Modernism, Leap into Action, for Third Text, Studio International and other publications. 

Syowia Kyambi is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose media spans across photography, video, drawing, sound, sculpture and performance installation. She holds an MFA from Transart Institute (2020) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002). Syowia is based in Nairobi and of Kenyan/German origin.
In Kyambi’s artistic practice history collapses into the contemporary through the interventions of mischievous and disruptive interlocutory agents who interrogate the legacy of hurt inflicted by colonial projects that still frame the wider political conjuncture of now. The work is messy, complex and uneasy requiring its viewers and participants to bear witness to an embodiment of collective experiences, and a constant search for links between the now and the morphed now that is encapsulated in her work while asking important questions about what is remembered, what is archived, and how we see the world anew. 

She is one of the 4 members of the “What the hELL she doin!” collective. The members are all female-identifying artists from across the African continent and its Diasporas. Common to their respective practices are touchstones, which include but are not limited to: the body and what gets embodied, remembering and dismembering, standing and leaving, invisible creolization, and labor as geography.

Louise Ashcroft is an artist who makes video, performance, audio, watercolours and objects which humorously chronicle her critical meddling in  real life situations. Often, her work involves analysing cultural content (like the Argos catalogue, call centres, tech culture, the reproductive industry or breakfast cereal marketing). 

She has made several audio works for BBC Sounds and has spoken at leading digital arts festivals such as KIKK and Chaos Computer Congress. She has presented work at Frans Hals Museum (NL), Museum of London Lates, Wellcome Lates, BQ Berlin, Arebyte, Bobinska Brownlee, Tate Learning, Open Space Contemporary, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Artsadmin, Turf Projects, Duckie, Coastal Currents Festival, Camden People's Theatre, Supernormal Festival and Latitude Festival. She teaches Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London, and co-founded the free peer-led art school AltMFA in 2010. 

She likes expensive trainers and angry Marxist rhetoric.

Louise says
"My work looks at barriers to starting a family as a queer woman, and the personal relationships that are in play in these decisions. We need to be rethinking social structures of parenting, not always going down the ‘nuclear’ style family and gender binary structures. I didn't want to be a parent or non parent in a relationship, I just want to be involved in a family! How can someone parent without being a traditional ‘having a baby’ parent?

Childfree by choice is a movement focused on choice, which can be problematic. Choice is a very loaded word, but is also a word that capitalism is based on. Having kids or not is not always a choice for people. Like for me, but then that means you can explore different ways to be ‘family’, which can be equally exciting."

Useful links
https://www.louiseashcroft.org/bird-hut.html
Insta @louiseashcroft1