The “mother” has retreated with her child to an old kitchen chair. Her body has become a vessel, pink as new skin, comforting as a hot-water bottle. Yet something is a little off. She doesn’t exactly nestle the rolled-up blanket that is her “baby”. Although tied by a harness strap, this infant sits atop the mother like an awkward offering. As the mother’s head tips back in what might be ecstasy, exhaustion or simply for a glimpse of the world beyond, it turns out she has no face – her neck ends in a dark opening, a void.
For the sculptor Katie Cuddon, that emptiness is an “element of horror” within Night Portraits, her new exhibition of clay works exploring early motherhood in its bodily and psychological contradictions and complexity. “My work comes from feelings that inhabit the body and take it over,” says the artist, who became a mother in 2018. “The relationship you have with a small child is incredibly physical. I felt extreme emotions and confusion: was I one or two people? It’s a really interesting place to think about sculpture from” – how the experience of motherhood can turn “coordinates of space and time on their heads.”
