rebecca wallis

“My artistic practice is studio based and solitary. You could say that mothermother has been therapeutic for me, it supports my solitary position in providing me with a network of like minded others and opening doors to potential collaboration.  I’m flattered by the invitation to be included as of part of this structure by inga.

Its holistic structure aligns with my own practice as its growth is of inclusiveness and extension. This development creates potential for a natural growth and stronger bonds. This is the Mothers’ way. As an artist and mother, acceptance and inclusion in arts communities are not always open and available.

The pieces I chose for mothermother represent a cross section of my practice. My choice has leant towards works that highlight the fluid and marginal. I chose the pieces that reveal this through how the works have been made and so to suggest that each work exists as a continuum.

I make analogies between each work and the Self, between how the works are made and my concerns. My concerns are the experiences of the Self in the contradictory and fluid state between both Self and Other, Subject and Object. 

Both the painting and the self may be perceived as a moment in time or a part of a process and not a fixed /seperate entity. The Self, her body, her matter, falls away, becoming the other and abject - an unfixed process of becoming. 

More recently I’m using analogies with my complicated relationship of both closeness and distance with my teenage daughters. For their own self - development they must create separation, which puts me, the mother, in a position to be the abject and the other, falling away from them. I’m especially moved by the uncanny contradictions experienced by the position of the self as a mother both physically and psychologically in relation to ideas of Otherness. Especially now, the fluid push and pull of the self in the role of the mother, yet the mother is the glue for the family unit. She is central to the family yet remains as the Other. But I’m also both fascinated and disturbed by the mothering body, fluid and falling away her subjectivity becoming objectified.  The contradiction in the need for separation and in the desire for unity is often what I aim at identifying within the processes of the works. There is such melancholy, and loss felt with attachment. There is longing for a fixed autonomous self and separate stable body, which contradicts the continuum of nature’s processes of Becoming. 

I was delighted that Judy Darragh accepted my invitation to formally be part of the mothermother initiative. She was part of the network already so it seemed fitting that it could be made official. I identify with the newness of the avant-garde in her practice. I admire her playful mix of unconventional materials. Her connection and choice of materials convey to me a freedom experienced and understood by both the feminine and Otherness. Each work embraces the newness and the wonder of every interactive moment she has spent with her materials. Her work differs from my own as it embraces a joyousness and excitement and I’m very much inspired by how her work includes light.”

Rebecca Wallis x mothermother 2020

Rebecca Wallis’ practice was cemented in 1995 with a Masters Degree in Visual Arts from Goldsmiths College, London. Her practice has predominantly used the traditional painting structure while simultaneously questioning it. She makes analogies between the Self and the painting. In her work Wallis exhibits a slipping away and a resisting of containment, referring to the allusive felt experiences of the Self and it's fluid positions between Self and Other, Subject and Object. It is her understanding of being outside of language, Informed by Lacan's theories of the Real and Kristeva's theories of Abjection.