Sally Butcher
“EAS(Y) does it”
(Blood, sweat, baby milk and, of course, tears)
42 x 59cm
2021
The EASY method (eat, activity, sleep, you) is about enforcing a “proper” schedule for your baby to help develop good sleep patterns and carve out space for you. Hard to maintain at the best of times, but in the middle of a pandemic, when your village has gone, other children are constantly present and require looking after, jobs are run from home, domestic duties massively increase, and time is generally twisted, any such routines are inevitability tested. A newborn at the beginning of the pandemic saw their first year born out across the three UK lockdowns, a time simply endured by most mothers; when everyone needed to Eat; Activities had to be provided for all; and baby Sleep was a time, more than ever, to clear it all up and start again; time for You simply disappeared.
A piece made with blood, sweat and tears; a phrase synonymous with Churchill’s speech in 1940, when he warned the British people of the hardships to come in fighting WWII. The pandemic was not a world war, but it has been a time of great adversity for many, especially mothers, the extent of which is only just emerging.
Sally Butcher is an artist, lecturer, researcher and (m)other based in Birmingham, UK. Her work explores female subjectivity across intersections of identity, spaces, body and image, working mostly through the mediums of drawing, printmaking and photography. Blending her Fine Art (BA) and Cultural Studies (MA) background, her practice is underpinned by academic feminist discourse of female embodiment, used to question conventional representations within spheres of the domestic, maternal and erotic.
She is currently undertaking her research practice project, awarded DYCP funding from the Arts Council England: ‘Re.conceive: Investigating the Invisibility of Infertility in the Visual Arts’, which seeks to challenge naturalised reproduction and reframe the narrative of normative motherhood with representations of the sub-maternal. Through this project, she has been featured in Elephant magazine, Maternal Art, Mothers Who Make, Artist Mother Podcast, Female Photographers, M.A.M.A. with Procreate Project (forthcoming), Coventry Biennial and shortlisted for the Jerwood Photoworks award. Her essay ‘Ma - Reframing the Representation of the Maternal Subject in the (Negative) Space of (M)otherhood’ is due to be published in the anthology ‘An Artist and A Mother’ (Demeter Press) next year.