Celebrating MOTHER and in partnership with The Wheeler Centre, a distinguished line-up of writers present new work exploring themes of mothers and motherhood, in response to artworks on display.
Few relationships are as defining than those we share with our mothers. Artists and writers have long sought to reflect, articulate and capture the complex experience of motherhood, exploring our collective desires and anxieties, and depicting experiences both universal and culturally specific.
Hosted by Maxine Beneba Clarke, writers Rachel Ang, Lulu Houdini and Edwina Preston, each will explore rich textures of motherhood in an era of shifting social mores, evolving notions of gender and sexuality, new reproductive technologies and competing conceptions of what being a mother can or should look like.
This event may include references to sensitive content. The speakers will share relevant content warnings with the audience before their readings.
Rachel Ang is an artist and writer who makes comics. Their latest book, a graphic short story collection titled I Ate The Whole World to Find You, was published last year by Drawn and Quarterly and Scribe. Rachel was the winner of last year’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, for their fiction piece, Thalassophobia.
Lulu Houdini is a gamilaroi poet and midwife living on and with Jerrinja Country.
Edwina Preston is a Melbourne writer and musician. Her published books are the novels Sororicidal (Picador, 2026), Bad Art Mother (Wakefield Press, 2022), The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer (UQP, 2012), and a biography of artist Howard Arkley, Not Just a Suburban Boy (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2002).Preston is a regular contributor to the Conversation, and her writing and reviews have been published in the Guardian, Griffith Review, Heat, Island, The Age, SMH and Australian. Bad Art Mother was shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2023 and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2023.
Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of over fifteen books for adults and children, including the short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the memoir The Hate Race, and the picture books When We Say Black Lives Matter, We Know a Place and The Patchwork Bike. Her poetry collections include Carrying the World, How Decent Folk Behave, It’s the Sound of the Thing: 100 new poems for young people, the recently released Beautiful Changelings and Stuff I’m (Not) Sorry For: 99 more poems for young people. Maxine was the inaugural Peter Steele Poet in Residence at the University of Melbourne (2023-2025).
MOTHER: Stories from the NGV Collection presents diverse stories drawn from across the NGV Collection. The exhibition features works by contemporary and historical Australian and First Nations artists, alongside international art. It explores both universal and culturally specific experiences of motherhood – from private transformation and societal expectation to intergenerational trauma and loss, mythology and religious iconography, storytelling and language and the deep connection between motherhood, nature and Country.
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