By Amanda-Jane Reynolds
@iamajreynolds
On the fourth level of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, the exhibition ‘Hannah Perry: Manual Labour’ focuses on the reimaging of motherhood through an industrial lens. It is a sort of human Olympics, a reflection of the feat of childbirth.
Hannah Perry’s submission of industrial structures and sculptures amplify Baltic’s mechanical echoes, harmonising with its past as a working-class hub for producing flour through the arduous processes operated by machines and men. Although the past is a masculine one, the present exhibition is of feminine creation and creating. Exploring mechanical sites, the artist recognises the similarities between machines and pregnancy, the pulling and squishing of objects being shaped under intense pressures.
“I came to the realisation that I had a deep-rooted, unconscious, anti-feminist view of the role of a mother that is excruciatingly patriarchal. As though the value of a mother’s labour is somehow less than that of one's success in the professional, male-dominated world.” Hannah Perry
The viewer is encouraged to walk through the opening between the artwork walls. To the left is a sound panel with cropped faces closing in, creating a valley of negative space concluding under the overlapped noses; ahead a 6-metre screen documenting a 15-minute long film of the artist’s visitation to a Russian titanium factory as well as her sharing the emotional and physical toll of her pregnancy; and to the right is a bulky hydraulic powered set of pelvic bones. Swathed in the bosom that is industrial, working-class and maternal, this space encapsulates class and motherhood through metaphor and experience. Rather than focusing on the beauty and mysticism that is growing an entirely new human from two teeny-tiny components, Perry instead focuses on the mother’s emotional and physical effects evoked by manmade machines.
I was particularly drawn to the piece ‘Antagonist’ as I am working my way through the book Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon. The installation’s upscaled bones evocative of skulls found from the Triassic period are hoisted from under the epidermal soil onto a scaffolding, reanimated by the metal tendons whirring on a demonstration of the old factory’s adjustment to verticality. Here, I imagine the 200 million years of human evolution through the female body, and how walking on all fours to two legs forced the body to adjust and accommodate to this awkward shrinking of the birthing chute.
The pelvis structure in ‘Antagonist,’ is a distinguishable human fragment. Linda Nochlin in her 1994 essay The Body, endeavours on the severance of bodily parts and what these parts represent. She describes that
“the human body is not just the object of desire, but the site of suffering, pain and death.”
The gyrating motion mimicked by the industrial mechanism within Perry’s installation shows the strain of pushing and tugging; it certainly recreates the sensation of pain and suffering.
The artwork’s title also implies an oppositional character. Perry has spoken of the horrors of the body dislocating the pelvis to allow birthing to proceed, and then relocating once the act of birth is over.
“Childbirth may shatter you into pieces and, while I allowed myself time and grace to recover physically and mentally, I still feel divided.” Hannah Perry
Perry demonstrates the physical and emotional pressures of pregnancy and the evolutionary pressures our bodies have undergone to reach this point in time. ‘Hannah Perry: Manual Labour’ exhibition runs until the 16th of March 2025.
The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art offers the option of having a team member assist with visualising the space and interpreting the works. On request, accessibility adjustments can be made to the space, such as lighting or sound. With excellent accessibility and a tender take on motherhood, I’d strongly encourage a visit!
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