Exhibition “Vessels for My Homeless Rage” – July 2023, Corner Store Merchants
Recent solo exhibition “Vessels for My Homeless Rage” expressed the disconnect between the implicit expectations of nurturing motherhood in contrast to overwhelming, messy emotions experienced while parenting. I am constantly picking up my child’s multiplying toys: blocks, lego bricks, balls, puzzles and plastic beasts. Using a traditional moon jar vessel form as stand-in for the “feminine” body, I distorted and distressed these rounded thrown objects using my son’s toys. By combining impressions of these objects with traditionally “feminine” symbols – the vessel, Korean moon jars, the cauldron and roundness – I investigated aspects of the vulnerability of the body, societal and personal expectations of mothers, and the emotional complexity of parenting.
For more information head to: https://cornerstoremerchants.com/collections/vessels-for-my-homeless-rage
Mum Voice
Exhibition of Ceramic work open May 15 – April 5th, Corner Store Merchants, Barker St Castlemaine
While weaning a young person, Jacobs has been washing many more dishes through recent isolation periods in Victoria. This has provoked her to replicate and re-make bowls, plates and platters which are in use in her own home. She has used her fingerprints as a decorative element on the edge of the vessels. These act as a frame for paintings of objects relating to her son’s expanding world and vocabulary. Objects represented in these paintings are those selected from the home or from the dog walk, all seen within a 5km radius.
By making this work, Jacobs aims to create a dictionary of her son’s known words and concepts at this time, demonstrating how she as a parent and a teacher tries to understand her son’s position as he learns, while expressing her own creative identity.
The exhibition runs until 12 June.
Katie Jacobs 