Vessels for my Homeless Rage

Vessels for my Homeless Rage is a powerful new exhibition by Castlemaine artist Katie Jacobs expressing her troubled relationship with the expectations of motherhood via ceramic forms.

Combining the traditional ceramic form and technique of the Korean moon jar with the sculptural, Jacobs stamps and impresses, marks and distresses large rounded vessels. Using her child’s play objects, she distorts these forms. By altering the perfection of the circle, she ruptures the tasteful associations with “femininity” seen in pottery vessel-making traditions.

Jacobs’ daily experience as a parent constantly picking up cars and trucks, animals and beasts, balls and bats has led her to experiment with impressing them into the malleable wet clay. Literally distorting the shape of the vessel, as a stand in for the nurturing “feminine” body, Jacobs aims to express the disconnect between the implicit expectations of nurturing motherhood in opposition to overwhelming and messy emotions experienced as part of the occupation of parenting. “Our society is infinitely creative in finding ways to dismiss and pathologize women’s rage. Women frequently internalize these social norms, seeing our anger as incompatible with a primary designated role as caretaker.”[1]

[1] Chemaly, Soraya L. 2018. Rage Becomes Her : The Power of Women's Anger.