Mythical Mother 9th - 30th September
Celine Sheridan.
Artist Statement
At the core of Celine’s investigations are perplexing and sometimes paradoxical questions about the body, it’s ‘psycho’ and it’s ‘soma’, which she explores on multiple levels across all media she uses, including painting, drawing, sculpture/installation and text based works.
In her practice, Celine examines the ‘mothers gaze’ as well as the familiar genre of ‘mother an child’, with the use of simple line, colour, anthropomorphism, mutated and misaligned body shapes, the body estranged from itself, all nodding towards 20th Century painting styles. In other media including foam and textiles, she explores the history of human touch and lack of touch in child development and has made work influenced by1940’s Orphanage Study by Rene Spitz.
Through the lens of feminism which she only subscribed to after becoming a wife and a mother, she realised the politicised landscape of gender and gender roles. She examines the roles of the mother and the wife in a hetersexual marriage and the question of ‘how are we raising our sons?’ with a cultural backdrop of abuses against women. Her work reveals an undercurrent of her own biography – she grew up in 1980’s Ireland with a rural society heavy with Theological Catholic teachings, GAA centred sports culture and the atrocity of Mother and Baby Homes for unwed pregnant women. She experienced PTSD after the birth of her first child which influenced this whole area of research interest. With an interest in ‘mother artists/artist mothers’ and its historical and logistical issues, she engages with Scottish initiative Spilt Milk Gallery, Maternal Art UK and artists in Ireland working in this area as well as attending conferences on this topic and extensive research in this area. She is influenced by writings from Orbach, Greer, Kafka, Winnicott and James Merrigan, as well as artists Janet Mullarney, Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin and Daphne Wright.
Her research is both colloquial and academic in nature, and includes discussions with third level professers and accessing academic writings with an interest into Evolutionary theory, and the similaritlies and comparisons between the human and animals behaviours including primates – with a focus on masculinity, the female body, mating rituals, child rearing, amongst others. She explores ideas about being ‘infested’ or ‘infected’, physically, emotionally or psychologically. These all lead into an ambitious project with Visual Artist Mel French titled ‘Anthropomorphic, Mammalia and the Hominidae’. This work will exhibit in two- person exhibitions in the Zoology Museum, Trinity College Dublin in 2022 and Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2023.
‘Bending’, ‘Mothering’, ‘Serving’ and ‘Constant’ are all drawings from 2018 from Celine’s ‘Mother series’ where she draws everyday scenes from her experiences of motherhood. These drawings are part of many she makes about the physical and psychological labour of motherhood and parenting.
‘Dinosaur (father & son)’ is a large painting that examines a scene of a father and son reading through a mothers gaze.
‘Cut Cut’ 2 is part of a series of drawings looking at self harm, hatred of the body and an aversion to the animal functioning of the female breasts. This work was influenced by the writings of psychoanalysist Susie Orbach.