Ellen McMahon
Artists’ Books and printed works
15th July - 17th August 2008
My work is about the politics of intimacy in the mother-child relationship and the conflict between the desire to merge and the struggle to separate, which has always been central to my life as a mother and as a daughter. My work is informed by my daily experience of mothering in relation to the social category of mother, constructed as natural and thus simultaneously romanticised and undervalued. I am interested in expressing the pleasure, the humour, the ambivalence, and the resentment that are mixed up in my sense of powerless responsibility and are bonded to the prevailing discourse of maternal sacrifice.
Baby Talk Flash Cards
A box of twelve 3 x 5 inch full-colour, inkjet printed cards designed to teach adults to talk baby talk.
Preverbal Flash Cards
A box of eight 3 x 5 inch full-colour inkjet printed cards designed to encourage adults to return to the world of the pre-symbolic infant.
Alice’s Idea
A 14 3/4 by 10 1/4 inch hardbound folio containing a platinum/palladium print and text, letterpress printed in three colours on Rives BFK, Signed, numbered edition of fifteen.
Maternal Queens: House of Cards
A package of eight 4 x 5 inch full-colour Indigo printed cards addressing the social mythology of motherhood.
A is for Autonomy
Twenty-six 3 x 5 inch alphabet cards housed in a hard cover portfolio and letterpress printed in collaboration with Chax Press on a Vandercook proofing press on Rives BFK.
Ellen McMahon is an Associate Professor of Art and Design in the School of Art at the University of Arizona. More work can be found at www.ellenmcmahon.com
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