Newlyn Art Gallery: Mothering, Caroline Walker

This exhibition runs until the 31st October 2026.

Art likes to make us think, to shift our perspectives and to do so it is often shocking or provocative.  Caroline Walker is a highly skilled painting and her pieces are beautiful but there is nothing shocking in her technique.  There are so many amazing painters out there.  And her paintings are quite lovely to look at, on the surface, not provocative. 

Caroline has chosen to focus on something so familiar but often overlooked by art and taken for granted by society as a whole.  By giving her focus to it and devoting her considerable skills to it, she makes us look twice.  If it is such a large part of life, why is it not better represented in art?  It's well known that women are not as well represented in art, and where they are, it is often as beautiful objects rather than successful individuals.  

I love the story of Louise Moerup and the statue of Venus in Copenhagen.  In walks and conversations with her young son, they had noticed the lack of female sculptures and how the ones that there were, were naked.  Women's achievements were not celebrated in the same way as men's.  So that winter she knitted a dress for Venus, to make people look twice and realise what wasn't there.  It started a quiet movement and the dress that began it is now in a museum.

Caroline Walker's paintings should not be as thought provoking as they are.  These are everyday scenes we should all be familiar with.  Children should see their early lives reflected in art, they should see mothers and grandmothers being celebrated and appreciated.  Women need to feel seen and appreciated.  Men need to see this too.  As a childless woman, I need to see it as well, because in someways, this part of female life I have been semi-excluded from.  Yes, I have changed nappies and cared for children.  I am an aunt and a step-mum and a step-grandmother.  

I can imagine some people visiting and just being bored, but their very boredom is something that should make them think.  We need to celebrate the good things in life, not just take them for granted.  Art documents life around us and so much of life is actually not seen because of this strange blindness we have as a society.  

I think it is part of the same thing that has affected artists like Beryl Cook.  She documented life and was skilled but the art world turned it's nose up a little.  I think it is great that the art world is not turning up it's nose at Caroline.  She receives commissions and exhibitions.  Long may it continue.  These moments need to be seen and remembered.

Caroline's focus is very much on working women, in often overlooked roles.  Early in her career, her pieces were highly staged involved models and hired locations.  There was an early shift towards a more documentary approach, capturing the everyday lives of women at work.  Her work is now very much sought after and included in many different shows across the country.

I enjoyed the exhibition very much.  Her work was in the main gallery and link on the first floor as well as in the lower gallery on the ground floor.  There was an additional piece on the ramp at the Exchange.  My favourite pieces were Sensory Play and a set of four Maternity pictures in ink.  I think it was the colours and glitziness of Sensory Play that drew me in...  A besequinned park trouper interacts with a mother and child in a ball pool at a holiday resort.  This picture also highlights the juxtaposition between women the comfortably attired mother and the lady in her working attire.  There are expectations on women and how they look and present themselves.  Women often juggle two worlds...  The ink pieces were just so free, such ordinary moments.  The NHS needs celebrating more.

I guess the loneliness of the new mother just had not occurred to me, but it was highlighted in several paintings.  Late night feedings, women at home alone with small children.  Was it always like this for women?

Then there is the unpaid caring of grandmothers that allows mothers to go out and work, to function...  And all the moments of caring and interaction in nurseries...

And still, this world of mothering appeals to me on a personal level a little less than the images of women working.  But if I were a mother, I would want that picture of me nursing...  The image that moved me the most though was Study for Theatre.  Its a busy scene, many professionals at work, clustered around and busy.  You don't necessarily realise at first that there is a baby at the heart of one cluster...  Then you look at the largest cluster and realise a face is looking out from under the blue shroud, desperate for a glimpse of their new baby as everyone works around them.

A great exhibition, I look forward to seeing more of Caroline's work.