Gallery Aferro presents Ripe: Conception and Perception, a two person show by Tara de la Garza and Anonda Bell.

Drawing on various sources of inspiration, from history to popular culture, the artists are questioning underlying assumptions about motherhood, and critique the myths and taboos of this fundamental act. Referencing their personal experiences (the artists were pregnant or gave birth in the lead up to this exhibition), the multi media artworks will address various themes associated with the gestational and post partum experience.

Tara de la Garza explores perceived and implied fears/taboos associated with the journey into motherhood. She is interested in depicting women who, like herself, do not conform to the notion of the passive and nurturing female, one whose exclusive raison d’être is to procreate. Normally working with toxic materials, such as oil and spray paint, de la Garza has chosen the more gentle mediums of ink and watercolor to present her journey. One of her works Conception will be distributed to audience members who wish to conceive.

Anonda Bell has created a large format, almost three dimensional work on paper which consists of a series of haphazardly conflated impressions of pregnancy and motherhood. The drawing’s composition mimics the vivid, irrational and exhausting hormone induced dreams of the various stages of pregnancy and the post partum period, with colliding elements that do not follow any kind of linear narrative. Juxtaposed within the drawing are references to women of history who were defined by their motherhood status, through to references of the artists’ experience of giving birth to her first child.