A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) explores the experience of motherhood through more than 200 works, pairing historical depictions of maternity with contemporary art created by mothers. Titled 'Mother', the show is co-curated by Sophie Gerhard and Katharina Prugger, both of whom have young children. They describe the central theme of motherhood as 'relentless'.
The exhibition opens with the Virgin Mary, a dominant image of motherhood in Western art, but contrasts this idealised figure with works that highlight the physical realities of birth and child-rearing. Elizabeth Djutarra's woven birthing skirts, worn during labour, hang above a Madonna, while a 15th-century painting by Rosselli shows a mother and child as a faded outline, suggesting erasure.
Invisibility of maternal labour is a key theme. Queen Victoria's sketch of her infant daughter obscures the nurse's face, and 19th-century photographs show well-dressed children held steady by unseen mothers. The exhibition also features Christine Godden's documentation of a home birth and Davida Allen's ambiguous 'Baby of 1989', where a mother appears to either feed or throttle her child.
Repetition is presented not as an enemy of creativity but as a parallel to maternal tasks. Kate Just's 'An Armour of Hope' is knitted in metal and silk for her adopted son, while Kyra Mancktelow's 'One Continuous String' recreates a dress her mother was forced to wear, reclaiming maternal history through traditional textiles.
