Caroline Walker's Tender Paintings of Motherhood

"The value ascribed to so-called 'women's work' has long held a fascination for Scottish artist Caroline Walker. In 2016, she began looking closely at London's service industries - first nail bars, their rows of polish glinting like a painter's palette, then tailors' workshops, hotel corridors, hospital labs. In these quiet observations, Walker was privy to the largely invisible economic and emotional architectures that sustain the city and the subtle ways quotidian routines are valued, or rather undervalued both socially and economically."

"It was, in fact, a staff member at her daughter's nursery who inadvertently coined the title, noting that 'mothering' the children was central to their training. Walker expands these pluralised definitions of motherhood in two new series: one depicting daily life at Little Bugs nursery, the other focusing on the distinctive labour ecology of a holiday park and its parallels."

Mothering comprises five years of oil paintings and ink drawings that document women's often overlooked work in hospitals, nurseries, holiday parks and domestic settings. The series traces earlier investigations into London's service industries — nail bars, tailors' workshops, hotel corridors and hospital labs — and reveals the invisible economic and emotional structures sustaining the city. The works foreground caregiving as an active practice rather than an identity, depict routine labour and its undervaluation, and draw parallels between professional service roles and the embodied care involved in mothering and nursery work.

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