Mothers Who Make Coventry Hub is dedicated to supporting the dual roles of mothers/birth-givers and care-givers who are also makers/artists/creative people, in the West Midlands and Warwickshire region. The Hub aims to connect local mothers through peer support meetings, workshops, artist talks, publishing, exhibition trips, and much more, in a hybrid curation of online and in-person events. Since 2021, Coventry Biennial have supported the development and delivery of the Hub’s activity. Read more about the origins of MWMC x Coventry Biennial’s partnership here.
During 2023 we held events, exhibitions, peer support and workshops with Coventry Biennial, including working collaboratively to create a garden as an artwork in the city centre. Read our recent publication Mothers Who Make a Garden: The Dreaming.
Image by Jessica Timmis of the Hub opening in May, 2019 at The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
Every kind of maker is welcome- professional and/or passionate – writers, painters, performers, film makers, musicians, technicians, producers, bakers, crafters, academics …. Every kind of mother/non binary parent is welcome - biological, adoptive, step, surrogate, foster, bereaved, grand, great grand, to be, or anyone who takes an interest in the concept of mothering. Our reach is across generations and art forms – we are thrilled by the plurality of voices that are part of this discussion. Children, of any age, are welcome. Your dual role as mother and maker is given equal status at all our events. Toys are provided for in-person events.
Membership at the Coventry Hub is fluid and always welcoming. We explore emergent themes, points of connection, points of dissonance, particular challenges, helpful resources. The meetings are non-hierarchical, the facilitator acts as a guide to take you through the meeting, but also shares as a fellow mother maker. The Coventry Hub is facilitated by local artist Adele Mary Reed. It was originally founded in May 2019 by Adele and Jessica Timmis. The first meeting was facilitated by Zoe Gardner (MWM North London).
For any queries about Mothers Who Make Coventry please email adele@coventrybiennial.com
Join a meeting:
Upcoming peer support meetings and workshops as part of Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2023:
Saturday 3rd January 2024
Mothers Who Make a Garden: Garden Session 10:00 - 12:00 at Old Grammar School, Coventry.
To book for any event: adele@coventrybiennial.com
Connect with us:
Illustration by Adele Mary Reed during an online peer support meeting
Photograph by Sinéad Patching from the Mothers Who Make a Garden project
“I hope the Hub will be nourishing to all kinds of mothers, offering a supportive space to reflect on the highs and lows of making and parenting in whatever forms they take. Finding opportunities to immerse yourself in making can be difficult. We hope to support in growing healthy networks, working the emotional and creative intelligence of mothering into our work, building each-other up and reminding the world how full of dynamism and resourcefulness mother artists are.”
Mothers Who Make Coventry exhibitions at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire
Mothers Who Make Coventry have an ongoing partnership with University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire, a large National Health Service hospital situated in the Walsgrave on Sowe area of Coventry, West Midlands, England, to exhibit a rotating programme of visual arts exhibitions. Since August 2022 we have been working with Emma Linnane, arts coordinator at UHCW to show 2D artworks in the hospital corridors which we curate via open call to all Hub members.
The first exhibition on display between December 2022 and November 2023, featured the work of artists who are also mothers from the West Midlands and Warwickshire region, Sally Butcher, Sinéad Patching, Adele Mary Reed, Ayesha Jones, Natalie Wootton and Denise Stretton. Fifteen pieces were shown on the first floor corridor of the East Wing by the Cardio Thoracic Critical Care Unit, in The Long Gallery. Themes of the works ranged widely between feminine subjectivity, abstraction, domesticity, beauty of the everyday, human identity, motherhood, grief, and documenting the journey of baby loss.
In January 2024 we installed our second exhibition, this time between Wards 10 and 11, by Coronary Care, and showing works by Sinéad Patching, Adele Mary Reed, Natalie Wootton, Denise Stretton, Janet Tryner, Artyanna22 and Hannah Moreton. Many of the works are for sale.
We are so grateful to Emma for her extremely generous support and guidance, a mother herself who has been so inclusive and empathetic of our different styles and themes. It was an extraordinary opportunity to show work in such a unique space, a corridor busy with patients, staff members, and the public - it was a privilege to be able to provide reflective, eye-catching, colourful, meaningful and personal imagery in this space. Find out more about UHCW’s arts programme here.
january 2024 onwards, exhibition
Please read our interpretation panel and find out about the different works below.
Mothers Who Make is an ever-evolving peer support movement founded in 2014. The Coventry Hub started in 2019 at The Herbert Art Gallery Museum and is a fluid, multi-generational network of women and non-binary artists based across the Midlands who identify as makers and mothers, and/or caregivers.
We welcome any kind of mother and any kind of maker, supporting and giving space and voice to all kinds of experience relating to the duality of carrying out these two vital, challenging, and life-changing roles.
The Hub is delighted to nourish partnerships with many arts organisations across the city and region, including Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, The Tin Music & Arts, and University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire.
This is their second group exhibition with UHCW.
Denise Stretton
Multimedia neurodiverse artist based in Coventry. Denise has been documenting her journey of baby loss since the prenatal terminal diagnosis of her son and the subsequent grieving process since 2015 through poetry, photography, painting, and drawing.
(1) Title: Autumn Leaves
(2) Title: A Walk in the Park
Materials: Fine art giclee prints on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper
Sale price: £90 per image, unframed
Instagram: @denise_r_stretton
Sinéad Patching
Self-taught photographer starting out in portrait photography in 2019 but more recently exploring large-scale abstract fine art photography.
Title: Isle of Wight, 2021
Materials: Digital photograph
Sale price: £75, unframed
Instagram: @sineadpatching
Artyanna22
Artist, art teacher and mother based in Coventry whose work captures combinations of colour, reflections, the urban and natural world. She likes to bring the viewer’s attention to often overlooked beautiful objects in the world in a snapshot of a painting.
(1) Title: Frozen Roses
(2) Title: Rainbow Cutlery
Sale price: £180 per painting, unframed
Website/Instagram info: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/artyanna22 / @artyanna22
Adele Mary Reed
Mother and artist based in Coventry who uses analogue film photography to create images in response to spontaneous everyday moments. Adele perceives photography as a subtle intervention and disruption.
Title: Cromer, 2023
Materials: Pro-Photo Lustre print of 35mm photograph
Sale price: £50, unframed
Website/Instagram: www.adelemreed.co.uk / @thecatbath
Janet Tryner
Multidisciplinary socially-engaged artist inspired by ground level environments.
(1) Title: Peach Kernals Spring Sunny, 2020
(2) Title: Haw Spring Sunny, 2020
Materials: Scans
Sale price: £40 per image, unframed
Website/Instagram: www.janettryner.com / @anatomyofasmile
Natalie Wootton
Mother and artist based in Warwickshire, Natalie’s work explores themes of motherhood, nature, humanity, fear and anxiety. Natalie uses photography as a way of healing and processing life’s uncertainties.
Title: Biophilla, 2023 Materials:
Digital prints Sale price: £50 per image, unframed.
Email/Instagram: natlee1981@icloud.com / @natlee1981
Hannah Moreton
Mixed media artist and tutor based in Leicestershire working with paper and stitch, personal and sentimental artefacts and stitching together portraits and commemorative pieces.
Title: Untitled - Breastfeeding Study Materials: Paper and Stitch
Not for sale
Website: linkt.ee/drawnbyhannahuk
December ‘22 - November ‘23, Exhibition
Please read our interpretation panel and find out about the different works below.
Mothers who Make is an international peer support network founded in London in 2014 by Matilda Leyser. The Coventry Hub started in 2019 at The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, and later that year became part of Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art’s core programme. The Hub is a fluid, multi-generational, diverse network of women and non-binary artists based across the Midlands who identify as makers and mothers and/or caregivers. We welcome any kind of mother, and any kind of maker, supporting and giving space and voice to all kinds of experience relating to the duality of carrying out these two vital, challenging, and life-changing roles.
Sally Butcher
Sally Butcher is an interdisciplinary artist, lecturer, researcher and (m)other based in Birmingham, UK. Her practice engages with feminist discourses on domestic, maternal, and sexualised spheres of female subjectivity and embodiment. She is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD on “(In) Fertile Embodiment: revealing the invisibility of infertility between the medical and maternal.”
Web: www.sallybutcher.com
Instagram: @sallybutcher
Uncovered Covers IX
Collagraphic Monoprint with Pencil, 2022
£495 framed*
Uncovered Covers X
Collagraphic Monoprint with Pencil, 2022
£495 framed*
These Collagraphic Monoprints are made from printed gendered coverings, including ‘real’ surfaces like human hair, mixed with ‘artificial’ ones, such as lace, ribbon, hairnets, and tights. These intersect with hand drawn elements, often reminiscent of female reproductive anatomy (fallopian tubes, milk ducts and vagina-like parts). The pieces play with notions of the ‘monstrous feminine’, intending to provoke desire and disgust at the unbounded female body. Borders are playfully transgressed as outer feminine coverings are integrated with internal female bodily parts, permeating between seductive textures, protective layers, and visceral embodiment.
Sinéad Patching
Sinéad is a self-taught photographer. She started out as a portrait photographer in 2019 but since 2020 has been exploring abstract fine art photography. Since having her second child this summer and spending more time at home, she has been creating large format abstract pieces of work using everyday objects. The subject of these three photographs is a pair of odd socks belonging to her son.
Web: www.sineadpatching.com
Instagram: @sineadpatching
Everydayscapes: Odd Socks 1
£275 framed*
Everydayscapes: Odd Socks 2
£225 framed*
Everydayscapes: Odd Socks 3
£225 framed*
Adele Mary Reed
Mother and artist based in Coventry using analogue film photography to make images in response to spontaneous everyday moments. Looking for ways to transcend convention, within her process, Adele perceives photography as a subtle act of intervention and a way to communicate alternative ideas and create space for interpretation.
Web: www.adelemreed.co.uk
Instagram: @thecatbath
Sunflowers, first week of school, September 2022
Anemone, Birmingham Sealife Centre, August 2022
£275 framed*
The Humber Estuary, Cleethorpes, July 2022
Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, October 2022
£275 framed*
Ayesha Jones
Ayesha is an artist and community producer based in Coventry. She is interested in how photography and film can be used as a catalyst for growth, healing and social impact. Ayesha is proudly mixed heritage, neurodiverse and has scoliosis/spinal fusion. She draws on these lived experiences in her work, in an attempt to highlight the complexity and universality of identity and the human experience.
Web: ayeshajones.co.uk
Instagram: @ayesha_jones
Self Portrait, Idiopathic Scoliosis. 2012
Motherland, Borth Wales. 2021
Natalie Wootton
Mother and Artist based in Warwickshire. The themes behind Natalie's work are motherhood, time, expression and fear and anxieties. Natalie uses photography as a way of healing, capturing a moment where a child is lost in their innocence, without the presence of how scary the world can be. Always finding light as an essential concept, without darkness we cannot see light.
Instagram: @natlee1981
Facebook: NatalieWoottonphotography
All is Full of love, 2020
Institution, 2020
Heaven and Hell, 2017
Denise Stretton
Denise Stretton is a multi-media neurodiverse artist based in Coventry. She has been documenting her journey since the pre-natal terminal diagnosis of her son, through baby loss and the subsequent grieving process since 2015. This is done through poetry, photography, painting and drawing. She had specialist bereavement counselling through The Laura Centre, encouraging her to return to her art practice. By connecting with her grief, Denise has given insight into the continuing grieving process affecting 1 in 4 women.
Instagram: @denise_r_stretton
In Case I Forget 17.11.2016
The fragility of the skeleton represents how fragile I can be in my grieving state, how the lightest touch or word could be crushing. See it, hold it, see how light it is in your hand. Walk with it, and see how easily it can float/ be snatched from one's hand by the slightest breath of wind or smallest breeze. Walk with it for a day, careful not to squash or damage it. How fragile life is.
Beauty and Pain Co-exist 27.06.2017
I was standing by the radiator in the dining room, holding this rose petal I had brought in from the garden. As I was holding it, I pierced it with my thumbnail. It gave me a visual of the pain of loss. I pressed into its delicate flesh; it had to be gently pierced. A certain amount of pressure would be too much, and the petal would be destroyed. Too many piercings and the petal ruined. The piercing created beauty within itself - a new vision.
The Anniversary of your Death.
I brought these daffodils the day before the second anniversary of your death. The next morning they started to unfurl. This act looked so beautiful and precious.
*Placeholder frames. New frame to be supplied by artist upon purchase of work