Tate St Ives, 2023.

How do we love the unborn and the no-longer living? How do we continue to mother and nurture a space for them: a future with their presence?

Inspired by the major exhibition and publication Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life this event focuses on under-represented perspectives on motherhood to consider how this might affect the making and understanding of art works.

How do we consider narratives about art through experiences of motherhood that include grief and childlessness not by choice?

This discursive event will feature artists, writers and art historians sharing stories and perspectives on how we interpret art through an artists’ biography and how we are enabled or challenged in bringing our own experience as audiences to it.

This event will allow time for conversation with audiences and for spending time in the galleries. We appreciate there will be a range of life experiences in the room, which the speakers and host staff are respectful towards. This event will bring together a diversity of positions around creativity and motherhood, being childless not by choice, and grief and loss around motherhood to reflect on how we encounter art.

Speakers include: Pragya Agarwal, Jody Day, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Hettie Judah, Holly Slingsby, Lucy Willow and Sophie J Williamson. Please see the speakers’ bios for more information.

With Katy Norris, Curator, Exhibitions, Tate St Ives and Melanie Stidolph, Curator Public Programme, Tate St Ives.

The event is programmed in partnership with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Refreshments and lunch provided.