Word to your Mother

Robyn Walton‘s Make Work (2024–26) features a roll of Chux cloth wipes on a wall-mounted patinated copper hanger, falling onto the gallery floor – its end unwoven and reformed into tassels like a scarf or blanket – a wry comment on the perceived value of craft and domestic labour.

Shelton’s photograph Between Nettle, Needle and Net (common nettle, wergulu) (2022) features a lactating breast squirting jets of mother’s milk onto the leaves of a nettle, extending her research into ancient and often suppressed plant-based medicine and its use in women’s reproductive health.

Caitlin Devoy‘s tactile sculpture Canons (2024), in silicone and resin, simulates nipples that double as old-school light switches – among other references, a playful take on being ‘turned on’.

Words also feature prominently in the show, for example in works by Mickey Smith (“BLOOD”), Holli McEntegart(“stay in the whirlpool”) and Jack (“FORWARD OUT OF ERROR”).

Tozer’s speech at the opening frames the collective’s sensibility and approach:

“This reproductive labour that we do is underneath, in the middle of, on top, and concurrent to the work we do as artists. And it is our work, and it makes our work better. Thank you for supporting our kaupapa of intergenerational knowledge sharing. We honour the ‘muth’, the witches, who have come before us. Generational inheritance is not just biological, it’s political, and I feel like we are part of something much bigger and much older …

This salon hang, this wall, this paint colour—is conceived to be the tongue. The tongue licks wounds, it gives us the ability to voice, to complain and protest. The tongue is in service. The tongue is good for a hot pash, for carnal pleasure. It’s good for being rude, and to taste, and to absorb …”

Tozer ended her speech with special thanks to the dealers:

“mothermother started because we thought you didn’t want us. Now we are BFFs. And we see you – we see you programming, collecting, presenting more under-recognised and under-represented artists than ever before.”

MOTHERMOTHER is equal parts eclectic and erotic – a different kind of ‘hot mess’. Perhaps it is also a reminder that your mother both exceeds and is not quite who you thought she was … The title of Darragh’s punchy mirrored acrylic text work sums it up well: NO SHIT.