MUMMY / mummy limited edition
participatory projects
MUMMY / mummy
Eleanor Shipman
2025
Limited edition of 100
Bespoke lanyard in silver foiled presentation box
Launched in partnership with Bosse & Baum at the event below
For enquiries: info@bosseandbaum.com
I am delighted to announce that I am launching this limited edition artwork with Bosse & Baum, co-directed by Alexandra Warder and Lana Churchill.
The edition is a bespoke lanyard I originally created as part of a research project at The University of Bristol called Empowering Parents in Higher Eduction by Dr Jenny Crane and Dr Erika Hanna. I facilitated a 6 month series of workshops with parents who work at the university to investigate, share and visualise their experiences through collage, assemblage, poetry and installation. This process resulted in a project zine called M/OTHERS IN THE INSTITUTION, this bespoke lanyard MUMMY / mummy and a public artwork called NOW YOU SEE US which is on display at Senate House. You can read the zine PDF here.
The lanyard MUMMY / mummy was the most important output to me from this social practice project. Participants were gifted these lanyards to wear as part of their daily attire, blurring the lines between the multiple hats we take on and off between our personal and professional lives. In literally labelling participants as mothers, the piece aims to continue the vital conversations we began in the research workshops around how we share our identities as parents in public and feel seen in work environments. It asks, where do we: draw boundaries, gain support, build community, make connections, share vulnerabilities, offer care, change policies?
In producing this work as a new limited edition of 100, this lanyard will now live in different personal and professional environments, continuing it's prompt to reflect on how we define motherhood, and make visible the hidden labour of parents as an ongoing social practice project.
In Conversation: Eleanor Shipman and Dr Kate McMillan
9 December, 7pm - 8.30pm
Bosse & Baum, Studio DG.1, Bussey Building, 133 Rye Ln, London SE15 4ST
Join artist Eleanor Shipman and academic and artist Dr Kate McMillan for a conversation exploring women’s labour and collaboration. Shipman collaborates with researchers to translate academic ideas into sculptural, participatory and public art works, and often approaches researchers to critically reflect on her own pieces through their research lens, most recently around m/otherhood, birth experiences and feminism.
On occasion of the talk Bosse & Baum will launch a new limited edition of the artwork MUMMY / mummy by Eleanor Shipman which will be for sale. The bespoke lanyard raises awareness of the visibility and access requirements of m/others in an institution and relates to an earlier project by Shipman titled M/others in the Institution. This was a creative response by the artist to the research project Empowering Parents in Higher Education by Dr Jennifer Crane and Dr Erika Hanna at The University of Bristol, 2023/24.
Together, Shipman and McMillan will discuss the intersections between creative practice, care, and community, reflecting on how shared experiences of m/otherhood, making, and collaboration shape artistic production.
Bosse & Baum