Through the Mother
University of Queensland Art Museum façade window commission
4 June – 18 Jan 2019/20
Curated by Peta Rake. Research supported by Heather Smyth from Food Science at UQ.
UQ Art Museum Window Commission, supported by Mrs Jane Tynan and Mr Michael Tynan
Triggered by a childhood memory of her mother drying plants upside-down in her father’s backyard shed, Brisbane-based artist Elizabeth Willing has imposed a hand-drawn gesture onto the surface of the mirrored steel and glass façade of The University of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum building.
The title of the exhibition, Through the Mother, has several connotations: a passing down of information and practice through a matrilineal line; ‘mother’ as a source; a ‘mother plant’, which is grown for the purpose of taking cuttings in order to cultivate other plants; and to ‘mother’ as an act. The artist has sought to give both physical and ephemeral form to memories of her mother, conveyed through smell, taste, and texture. The exhibition space is both familiar and unsettling—the tight hallway, the dark shed—gesturing to the way in which memory is always only ever a fragmented reconstruction of actual events.
- Website text, Curator Peta Rake
