Ruth Carr
Spent Sacks
As a mother and self-proclaimed hag, my practice emerges from the physical and emotional realities of lived life. Generic depictions of womanhood are destabilised.
Using methods such as machine embroidery, large-scale painting, and construction processes not typically associated with softness, the work disrupts expectations around how femininity should appear or behave. While delicate fabrics and watercolours nod to expected femininity, they’re countered by unflinching depictions of sagging flesh, maternal labour, and melancholic stillness. A modesty screen, as both object and symbol, critiques how femininity is shaped through visibility and control.
This is not a rejection of the feminine, but a reclamation of its full emotional and physical range: vulnerable yet strong, tender yet unyielding, still yet urgent. It becomes an active site of transformation and resistance.
The work resists simplification, inviting viewers into an embodied space that is intimate, complex, and unapologetically real.
