The Spirit of Sheela and the Death of Innocence
Susan Roberts & Judith Beecher
10th May - 28th June 2008

South Wales’ artists Susan Roberts and Judith Beecher’s current exhibition examines conflicting facets of womanhood.

Susan Roberts’s current work deals with the idea of ‘myth making’ in relation to the representation of women through the ages. In this show she finds contemporary meanings for an ancient, possibly pagan representation of woman, the Sheela na Gig.

The Sheela appears to have a strong connection to the idea of an earth goddess and is often linked to sex, birth and fertility. She is very expressive and far from demure and today might be seen as being pornographic, yet she is often seen on churches carved in stone. Society finds these facets of the female a lot more difficult to deal with than a portrayal of woman as a symbol of beauty. As an artist she is interested in trying to find ways of representing these other aspects of woman.

Judith Beecher’s recent work is a portrayal of a more inexplicable aspect of motherhood and comes from recent research into infanticide.

The theme of my work almost always involves children, and this body of work is no different. When I first decided to look at reasons why some mothers abandon or kill their babies, my research led me to some very interesting theories. The first involved worldwide disparities in female populations, and depending on which study you follow is between 20 - 60million at present. But it’s not a modern phenomenon, there is evidence of mothers’ abandoning their babies to the elements in ancient Rome and Greece, and they had to kill deformed babies by law. I’ve mentioned ancient Greece and Rome but it was widely carried out throughout the ancient world and many think it was a form of population control to kill girls in particular.

At no point do I condemn or condone infanticide or sex selected abortion, I’m just fascinated to find out if this is natural behaviour or not. As such, my work may look diverse, but the elements of abandonment, control, protection and possession are all there. The buttons represent the babies handed over to orphanages and foundling hospitals, where mothers often knew their babies had a high chance of dying through neglect.