32 pages, 14.8 x 21cm, saddle-stitched
CCP.PE.Z.010
ISBN: n/a
AU $25
CCP.PE.Z.010
Ruth O’Leary
Hidden Mothers
'Hidden Mothers' takes its title and conceptual framework from Victorian-era photography, where mothers were concealed beneath draped fabric to photograph their children. This historical practice of maternal erasure became my point of departure for a sustained critique of idealised maternal iconography throughout art history. Shot in photo-booths around Melbourne in this series I appropriate the Victorian veil and transform it through painted fabric that renders the maternal body hypervisible rather than concealed. My torso becomes a surface inscribed with witches, washing machines, ravens, and clocks - domestic objects and mythic figures that constitute the visual lexicon through which motherhood is culturally inscribed. These loaded symbols form a counter-iconography that speaks to the materiality of maternal experience: its embodied labour, its corporeal presence, its dialectic of creation and erasure. – Ruth O’LearyCCP.PE.ZINE is a collaborative publishing initiative from the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) and Perimeter Editions, dedicated to providing a platform for emerging photographic artists to exhibit their work in an accessible zine format. Each zine in the series – launched periodically in pairs – focuses on a single body of work by artists selected by the CCP.
Edition size: 200 copies
Publication date: October 2026
Printed in Australia
Published by Centre for Contemporary Photography and Perimeter Editions
Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
Commissioning editor: Daniel Boetker-Smith
Editors: Justine Ellis, Ash Holmes and Dan Rule
Design: Matilda Stein for Perimeter Bureau
For international wholesale and distribution enquiries, images and information, please contact Perimeter Editions, Melbourne:
hello@perimetereditions.com
+61 3 9484 8101