Well-behaved women seldom make history

On rights and parenthood: nurturing, domestic work and the care economy

There is privilege in capturing people's private struggles and elation in witnessing that energy growing into collective outcries against the way the world is institutionalised. I realised that those struggles are embedded in the signs they carry, simple objects of words and symbols charged with hope, tenderness and defiance.

My latest projects give visibility to the work of social reproduction – whether in the raising of children, in social care or in the nursing profession – as essential to human wellbeing. The works presented here are inspired by social protest movements - of people becoming memory through political acts of solidarity and amity that give material presence to the work of care and social reproduction - a lifetime of labour which disappears with each passing moment, and that few get to see.

The images featured here were shot on black and white 35mm film in October 2022 on Parliament Square, London. The March of the Mummies saw parents and carers protesting on the basis that tax allocations and social safety nets - including subsidised quality early-years care and education –  should reflect the needs of society as a whole.

Something about the hand-crafted aesthetic of the signs – the probing nature of the text, the resigned humour – calls up feminist slogans from the previous generation and surprise us being in a world too stubborn to acknowledge the significance of creating and nurturing life. What is the worth of such labour?

Protest posters are the product of ideas, of an etiquette that governs their formation, their materiality, the space they occupy and the functions they serve. As objects, they possess solidity. My concern became one of concretising these concerns, of setting down conversations that commemorate the universality of the human experience of struggle.