Statement
Au nom de la mère investigates alternative visions of the maternal as experienced by mother and daughter. I use photography to capture intimate and powerful moments of a relationship with my mother to uncover the complex dichotomies and multilayered identities inherent in the mother daughter bond. The title, Au nom de la mère (In the name of the Mother) refers to my mother’s French heritage and maiden name, du Bignon. This project facilitates an intimate reconnection with the mother which supports ongoing research into my French heritage and the process of changing my last name from the paternal to the maternal. The act of photography as a creative practice thus allows for enduring connection and jouissance with the mother and du Bignon name and a revisualisation of the maternal within contemporary society.
Au nom de la mère is a photographic auto-ethnography that re/presents the mother subject and the mother/daughter bond within a cultural milieu where the maternal experience is both ignored and feared. Drawing on my own understanding of the maternal as a daughter, I use photography to capture intimate and powerful moments of a personal relationship which expose the complex dichotomies and multilayered identities inherent in the mother daughter experience.
Olive Lipscombe is a photographer based in Fremantle, Western Australia. In 2016 she graduated from Curtin University with a Bachelor of Arts, Photography and Illustration design and completed her Masters of Research, specialising in photographic portraiture in 2019.
As a part of Masters of Research, Lipscombe has been developing photographic work and research into representations of the parent/child bond in photography, specifically investigating the maternal relationship. In 2018, images from this body of work were selected for the Centre of Contemporary Photography’s (CCP) Salon Awards, where she won ‘Best Portrait’. Lipscombe has also been a finalist in the Iris Award and CLIP Award at Perth Centre of Photography (PCP), the South Perth Emerging Artist Award and Subiaco Photography Prize. She has exhibited in various group exhibitions in Perth, including ‘Continuity and Change; Future’ at Mundaring Arts Centre 2019, Collective 2018 at PCP and A Thousand Degrees 2018 at Paper Mountain Gallery.