Posts Tagged Mothers
News Art – AUSTRALIA HAS SINGLE MUM PRIME MINISTER
So Julia Gillard (the shark) defeated the crocodile (cold blooded reptile).
Australia has a government once more and it is a minority Labor government formed after negotiations with one Greens MP and three Independent MPs.
To represent this through art I thought back to one aspect of Prime Minister Gillard that some people tried to make an issue of during the election, that is, her lack of children.
During the campaign Tony Abbott, her election rival, questioned Gillard’s ability to relate to the electorate because she is childless.
NB:: He said this in defence of his advice to his daughters that their viriginity was ‘the most precious gift you can give someone’. Abbott felt he was more able to relate to the electorate on the subject of hymens being the most precious and exciting thing about a prospective girlfriend/wife (above all that baloney like personality and love) because he was both a parent and in possession of a hymen I assume.
Julia Gillard wins one seat majority
Anyway, it’s a very convincing argument from Abbott except for only ONE key point… Julia Gillard IS a mother now. She is the mother of a new parliament and a new era in Australian politics.
And as she tries to negotiate every single bill through a minority government she is going to be the most stressed and depressing mother you ever met. Not to mention the fact that Julia is also a single mum. She has some baby sitters and Treasurers to help out but ultimately the responsibility falls to her.
This is a sculpture of her holding the Parliament, which is her baby now, in her arms.
Meanwhile the weak, upset and confused newborn baby is making her tired. The demands of looking after the baby will make it hard for Julia to work full time at her job (looking after the parliament) and hence this job will inevitably suffer as she tries to juggle her baby/looking after the parliament with work/looking after the parliament.
In the end she may find that despite her desire to ‘have it all’ she will one day have to choose between being a mother to the new government and being a mother to the new government.
I hope she chooses wisely.
Also the new parliament will probably soil itself a lot in the first six months. And I bet old hypocrite Julia will one day advise it to guard its hymen big time!
News Art – NATIONAL CARERS WEEK
Six million people in the United Kingdom provide unpaid care for someone who is ill, frail, disabled or who misuses drugs or alcohol’ Full story here
National Carers Week
This is a terrible statistic. I tried to think how I could help increase awareness of the plight of carers. The issue made me think of the famous old tale of ‘The Old Mother’…
I have depicted here in sculpture the moment in the story when the Old Mother kneels before the young woman, saying ‘Daughter, why have you forsaken me? I am hungry and fed you and bathed you and looked after you for all those years‘.
The young woman replies ‘I’m sorry, old woman, I do not recognise you‘.
The Old Mother replies, ‘What are you saying, I brought you up from when you were but a baby!’
The young woman replies ‘You are mistaken, I know you not’.
The Old Mother replies, ‘How can you speak these words? I am your- oh, wait- no it’s fine… sorry, yes I know you’re not my daughter, I just had to hide behind you for a moment while that bloke over there was walking past. I owe him a LOT of money. Sorry, calling you daughter was the first thing I could think of to get your attention and crouch behind your skirts like that‘.
The young woman replies, ‘Oh! Oh I see! Oh thank goodness, you gave me a heart attack there!‘.
The old mother replies ‘Hahaha, that’s funny. I’m so sorry. God you must have thought I was a mentallist!‘
The young woman replies ‘No, no… nothing that bad- I was just like…woaaah, what’s this all about… hehehe.’
And the Old Mother replies ‘Ha ha… Well I guess I should be- ooh the old knees don’t like getting up after that long on the ground, he he.’
The young woman replies ‘Oh are you right there?’
The Old Mother replies ‘Yes yes, just me complaining.’
The young woman replies ‘He he…. ahem.’
The Old Mother replies ‘Well, thanks again! See you around’
The young woman replies ‘oh, yes, see you!‘
I think we could all do worse than to remember this story at this time.
News Art – BUDGET CUTS AROUND THE WORLD
President Barack Obama spoke on Tuesday of an initiatve to cut government agency budgets while Britain, Germany, Spain and France have also spoken of austerity plans. The new British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne warned yesterday of tough spending cuts and the need for big sacrifices from the public.
George Osborne and his budget cuts
This is about everyone having to make sacrifices. As something to inspire us I tried to think of who in society makes the greatest sacrifices in life and I immediately thought of mothers. There is no one who is more filled with love and more willing to give everything for someone or some thing than a mother for their child.
I then thought about my friend who is a recently new mother – well I say friend, more aquaintance… and I say ‘recently’, it was AGES ago now – and I thought, imagine if you asked this mother to not talk about her kid for just 10 minutes.Or even imagine if you just asked her not to link a discussion about, say, sanctions against Iran’s nuclear power programme, back to the dull fact that her toddler Megan shouted ‘no no no’ in a very cute, angry voice this morning.
For her to agree to this would require one of the greatest sacrifices known to man and it is this kind of selflessness we are all going to need to aim for in the upcoming financial squeeze.
I then saw the CLEAR link of this girl’s pain at sacrificing talking about her child briefly to how the UK Chancellor George Osborne would feel if he were asked to stop talking about his precious budget that he keeps banging on about for just one evening. I imagine his ‘friends’ are in for a lot of conversations such as this…
Friend: ‘George! How’s it going? Haven’t seen you in months! I’ve not been too good myself, lost my job, ended up homeless. Had nowhere to-‘
George: ‘Ha ha, oh that reminds me how my budget was looking a bit fat today and then I realised how I could move a lot more rehousing responsibility onto local charities. They’re so cute when they cry out for funding’.
Friend: ‘Oh I heard you’re just Mr One Topic lately. Maybe we’ll catch up in July’.
So I have sculpted this image of a mother and child/my friend and her very aggressive toddler/the general population and cuts in public sector spending/George Osborne and his budget to represent Sacrifice.