motherload-motherlode
(autumn 2017 – spring 2018)
An Artist Residency in Motherhood

Garden waste, shredded journals, horse shit, coffee grinds, pine needles, household food scraps, baby’s first hair cut, cardboard, coffee grinds, spent hay, thread salvaged from potato sacks, found sacking.

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GATHER TOGETHER your regrets, fears, longings and desires.
SHRED your old journals, the stack of bills and discarded grocery lists. 
Weed the garden, BRING IN fragrant herbs.
Let the scrap bucket PILE UP and OVERFLOW onto the kitchen bench.
SUPPLEMENT with GLEANINGS. Cardboard boxes from Pak n Save. Seaweed and pine needles. Spent hay and horse shit. Coffee grinds from BP.
REMEMBER the envelope containing the baby’s first hair cut.
SITUATE somewhere you can KEEP AN EYE ON. Outside the kitchen window perhaps.
CALL IN your MATES to assist.
MUCK IN. Side by side, WORK IN COMBINATION to LAY IT DOWN.
CAST wisps of baby’s hair. TUCK in with stitching SPELLING it out.
Take off your gumboots. Drink a cuppa together on the front steps. 
GIVE THANKS. For MESS, failure, IDLENESS. For things yet to come.
REST now. Let worms and microbes BREAK IT DOWN.
Over the FALLOWING months, GAZE out the kitchen window at the heap as you wash the dishes. 
When you go out to check the mailbox, STANDSTILL to lay a hand on top. FEEL heat within. WONDER at how your hand is BECOMING just like your mother’s.
BROADCAST at flowering time. SUMMON NEIGHBOURS to COME ROUND. Fill their buckets. BLESS their summer gardens as they have BLISSED you.