Freya Tripp

ARTIST - M/OTHER

I am a Tasmanian born artist-m/other working between Central Australia and Northern NSW, holding a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours from Southern Cross University and a Master of Arts (Research) from Charles Darwin University. Currently I am a PhD Candidate with CDU (The Good-Bad Mother: Merging Mothering / Caregiving + ASD with Doctoral Studies (Matricentric-led Creative Practice Research). This research is supported through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. 

In a matricentric-led creative practice, I interrogate subjectivity as it pertains to the ‘artist-m/other’ context (particularly in relation to academic frameworks) as a mother to a neurodivergent child. In the early stages of a creative practice PhD I am conceptualising a theory of artist-m/other subjectivity as an affective liminal borderspace. That is, theorising the artist-m/ other as subject position - interrupted and several - sitting in contrast / opposition and challenge to research frameworks wherein the artist + researcher is posited within individualist, anthropocentric and patriarchal frameworks .

To conceptualise artist-m/other subjectivity as liminality, I extend Bracha Ettingers matrixial theory of trans-subjectivity and wit(h)nessing to the artist-m/other context and build on scholarship that theorises maternal / matricentric subjectivity, particularly in relation to situated knowledge and the multimodality of the artist-m/other context. I introduce the terms Matricentric-led and Matricentric Aesth-Ethics, positioning mothering and art-making together (distinctive disciplines of social, cultural and political action) to foreground the artist-m/other and matricentric-led practices as relational  aesth-ethic production and forces of change.