JOE SPENCE AND ROSY MARTIN, LIBIDO UPRISING PART I AND PART II, 1989

Jo Spence, with Rosy Martin, with David Roberts
14 photographs, c-prints on paper, each: 635 × 425 mm

“In their collaborative series Libido Uprising, Spence and Martin examine the relationship between mother and daughter. The work focuses on Jo’s vision of a 1950s working class, domesticated housewife, seen from the eyes of a young woman in the 1980s who is exploring her sexual freedom. The series complicates the archetypal woman, one juggling multiple jobs with household chores, whilst maintaining her identity as an independent and sexualised being. The work captures the conflict between the domestic and the erotic and how they co-exist. Rather than a rejection of the mother figure, the series evokes a sense of understanding, acceptance and intergenerational comradery around the socially imposed strictures of womanhood.

Through their work together, Spence and Martin displayed new visual versions of themselves to the camera, demonstrating that there is no single self but many fragmented ones, each competing for conscious expression, many never acknowledged or expressed. Like so many artistic partnerships, the act of collaboration played an integral role to their process-based practice. Their working process was established around dialogue and acceptance; granting permission to relax and release. The series displayed here all indicate the difficulties and stresses of relationships – both with others and ourselves – all encapsulated within a therapeutic context of letting go and finding acceptance.” - Richard Saltoun