Mother Art Prize 2018 Call for entries
Procreate Project is excited to announce the second edition of the Mother Art Prize: an international open call for self-identifying women, non-binary visual artists with caring responsibilities. The prize is aimed at artists working in one or more of the following media: painting, drawing, mixed-media, photography, digital art, sculpture, ceramics, installation, textile, sound and video. [We welcome all kind of proposals, without any theme restrictions].
Procreate Project is a pioneering arts organisation supporting the development of contemporary artists who are also mothers, working across art-forms.
Working towards equal representation and opportunities for women and mothers, today Procreate Project offers online and offline platforms and opportunities for the display, screen and staging of works, connections with peers and organisations that can support artists at different stages of their career.
20 shortlisted artists will be exhibited at the Mimosa House gallery, London [ 2-18 May 2019] as part of a group show and will be given the opportunity to sell their artworks on the Procreate Project online shop.
Enter by 26 November 2018, midnight GMT/London Time.
The Award Winner will receive:
- 1 Month residency at The White House in Dagenham with the support of Create London (this covers an Art Studio and accommodation for the artist and her family
- £500 cash prize
- 2 mentoring session (1to1 or Skype) with Sylvie Gormezano, Director at Picture this productions and Chair of the Association of Women Art Dealers (AWAD)
- 1 free ticket to Oxytocin 2019 (date TBC)
To be considered by the judges for the prize and group exhibition in London, you will need to pay the entry fee of £15 for up to 3 artworks via Paypal [ please include MAP 2018 as subject] and submit the below form. If you prefer to pay by bank transfer please email us. You can pay in British Pounds, US Dollars and Euros too (if you wish to pay in any other currency, please contact us).
The judging panel is composed by:
– Beth Colocci, trustee of the UK Friends of the National Museum for Women in the Arts
– Sylvie Gormezano– Director at Picture this productions and Chair of the Association of Women Art Dealers (AWAD)
– Marcelle Joseph, Director and Curator at Marcelle Joseph Project
– Sigrid Kirk, Co-founder of ARTimbarc and AWITA ( Association of Women in the Arts)
–Elizabeth Neilson, Director at the Zabludowicz Collection
– Laura Smith, Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery
How to submit :
- Upload images of your work – maximum 3 artworks, maximum 3 images of each artwork. High-resolution images only – recommended size is 2MB
- Please label all JPEG Image files as follows: Last&First Name _ArtworkTitle_&_Media_Dimensions
- Visual art: All artworks are first juried by a digital photograph. All media and dimensions are acceptable for submission. You can submit up to 3 images for your 2D and 3D artworks.
Before submitting the form please make sure you read the T&C on Zealous.
Entry fees are non-refundable. Submission of the works does not guarantee being selected for the exhibition.
Timescale:
October 2018 – 26 November 2018: Entries open
December 2018: Judging begins
January 2019: Shortlist, winner and exhibition dates announced
2019: Exhibition opens [Date TBC]
Motherhood, Loss and the First World War
Motherhood, Loss and the First World War is a project conceived by BIG IDEAS. It acknowledges the universality of bereavement as the defining experience of the First World War with a special focus on the impact on mothers — an overlooked aspect of grief from the period. The project is in partnership with Royal Holloway University of London and the Institute of Historical Research.
Motherhood, Loss and the First World War will share community-researched stories of women bereaved during the First World War, bringing to light their experiences and inviting communities across the country to remember them. The project will have a special focus on women’s groups to discover these stories and to respond to them in creative and meaningful ways, empowering isolated women by connecting them with their community, and developing citizenship, civil society and advocacy skills. It will also bring to light new areas of historical research into the impact bereavement had on societies in Britain during and after the First World War.
Procreate Project was invited was awarded a small fund of £200 to cover expenses, materials the delivery fo the activity.
The workshop will involve gatherings of a group of 8 artist mothers. We will together analyse the material provided by Big Ideas and will respond to it using text, sound, video and visual as well as movement responses.
Motherhood, Loss and the First World War conference
In partnership with the London Centre for Public History and the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), Big Ideas is organising a Motherhood, Loss and the First World War conference on 5 and 6 September 2018 at Senate House in London.
Time allowing, the artistic outcome of the research conducted during the workshops, will be used and exhibited during the conference.
The community of artists will benefit from the experience as it would give them the opportunity to learn about other women’s history, empower them and enable them to process their own grief and experience of motherhood through the support of an artistic community and the collective art making.
The documentation of the work will be shared online through the Procreate Project channels to further engage the public with the topic.
The workshops are free of charge and children are welcome. [ Please note childcare cannot be provided due to lack of resources, however it can be collectively booked and expenses can be share between the participants].
Dates will be confirmed and agreed between the group starting from the last week of August.
If you would like to participate please email events@procreateproject.com.
Creative Mothers Programme/GPS Embroidery by Lizzie Philps
It was a delight to partner up with The Mother House, Stroud as part of “GPS Embroidery”. This is a project which takes mothering arts practices beyond the domestic sphere by using the to and fro of the GPS signal to scrawl across city, suburban and countryside locations in an attempt to broaden ideas about who-gets-to-write-what-where in and about the British landscape. I have been running these workshops with people who mother in a variety of contexts, both alongside children and without, but this was a wonderful way not only to enable artist-mothers to keep working, but to broaden the audiences for our practices by carrying them out in the public space of the library.
Using a variety of playful mapping techniques, and with GPS trackers to trace their routes, participants created their own representations of the city. Whilst commuters may use maps as a tool to show main roads and businesses, we might not see the other, unpaid kinds of workers who are making paths through the streets. Whilst tourists might use maps to find sights and attractions, the details of life that escape the municipal overview are not often acknowledged or recorded, but are equally memorable and fascinating. Mapping allows us to experience details of the world we might otherwise miss, and to share a glimpse of these perspectives by exhibiting the maps in the library.
In parallel workshops facilitated by The Mother House Stroud’s Rebecca Stapleford and inspired by the stories of ‘A River’ by Marc Martin and ‘The Magic Paint brush’ by Julie Donaldson the group explored the theme of place using a variety of playful mapping and creative painting. The children’s work was exhibited in the library space, too.
The project was the starting point for Gloucester Library’s Creative Mothers Programme, which has been developed by producer Hannah Brady and aims to develop sustainable networks of mothers within the area.
The work has helped us explore the complications of making work with babes in arms and roaming toddlers and demonstrates the possibilities of what can be achieved in a short period of time within a supportive environment.
It was wonderful to work with such a creative and friendly group, and to be able to share our work with the library staff, visitors and general public. I hope that together we have helped to raise the visibility of maternal work (both artistic and caring) another notch, but I would like to give the final word to the artists:
These lines represent walks I have made with my daughter since becoming a mother. They portray a growing sense of discovery, beginning and ending from our secure base, our home. They begin small and close and with time they grow, branching out into new pathways. This is symbolic of the neurological development of an infant’s brain, and our journey together stepping out into a new world.
Ruth Bide
Drifting around the city I felt invisible. Everyone was going about their usual business but I felt unusual. My senses were heightened and everything was amplified. Sights, sounds, people, faces. I wanted to notice everything but it didn’t feel overwhelming. It felt glorious. As if I had permission to stop and stare, reflect and enjoy whatever caught my eye.
Sharon Bennett
When walking with the intention of observing I noticed details. I wouldn’t normally pay any attention to these details at all. As Sylvia slept in the pram, I took photos of these details then overlaid them on the map of Gloucester. I like the sense of scale between the items in the drawings and the streets represented by the map.
Athene Whitaker
Supported by Gloucestershire Art of Libraries, The Arts Council, Procreate Projects and inspired by Mother House Studio.
Participants: Chloe Kempton, Sharon Bennett, Athene Whitaker, Katrina Rosser, Jessica Timmis , Ruth Bide and Oonah Davies
