“There is no more sombre enemy of good art,” wrote Cyril Connolly, notoriously, “than the pram in the hall.” Have kids, runs his supercilious maxim, and your creativity is well and truly screwed. The fact that great art has been made by parents for millennia seems not to have troubled him, nor the insult to those who give birth, or their babies. Not even, as this terrific Hayward Gallery touring exhibition shows, that procreation itself may be the vital inspiration.
Acts of Creation is riveting from first to last, an exceptional (and touring) anthology of contemporary artworks to startle, move and awe, all one hundred and more plunging deep into motherhood. It opens with an object of stirring mystery. Lying on a plinth is a form suggestive of a woman’s pelvic anatomy, delicate but strong, fashioned out of animal horns, twigs, steel and earthy red soil. Fine silver wires run between the cavities.
