ART, RESEARCH, THEORY

In the April column we are pleased to feature Helen Sargeant, an interdisciplinary artist and mother of two sons aged 7 and 14. Sargeant works from home collaborating on projects with her family and from her studio in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. In her artistic work Sargeant is concerned with disrupting and challenging idealized representations of the maternal and the idea of the 'good mother', her photographs recording the ever shifting, transitory moments that she shares with her family. This year Sargeant completed M(other) Stories, a year long journal (2015-2016), comprising of autobiographical writing juxtaposed with photographs taken at home and during the school runs by using her smart phone camera. Over the course of a year, she published 332 posts documenting the work and challenges required of a woman balancing her roles and responsibilities as mother and artist. M(other) Stories was presented at The Motherhood & Creative Practices Conference, London South Bank University, 2015. Sargeant's work was exhibited at the Project AfterBirth (White Moose Gallery, UK) and she was one of the collaborators on The Egg The Womb The Head & The Moon -project and accompanying exhibition. Most recently her work was shown at the Artist as Mother as Artist exhibition (Lace Market Gallery, Nottingham, 2016.) Her column for m/other voices forms a part of a new and ongoing investigation going back in time to when she became a mother and was dealing with post-natal depression.

You can read The Miserable Mother, Part I: A Silent Earthquake here.