“However worn down the mother of the “disabled” or “troubled”
child may be, she remains a fighter. She only despairs about what
will happen to her child “after her death”. As long as she’s alive, the
mother is there to guarantee life to the best of her ability, whatever
the conditions. ”

(Motherhood Today: Julia Kristeva 2005)

Marilyn Kyle’s central theme, within her interdisciplinary practice, is the reality of domestic life, of family and objects. It is the antithesis of the idealised: domestic objects which evidence their history through marks and wear, as well as those whose basic materials have remained close to their original state (as seen in ‘Homemaker’ and in her work around the ‘family’ bread board). Marilyn also considers a broad understanding of ‘family’, with particular focus on those that are troubled or imperfect (as seen in ‘Absence’; ‘Anniversary’; ‘The Mending’). The resulting works are often visually enticing but, on closer inspection, contradictions emerge: a child’s delicate dress is ripped; a baby doll is incomplete or damaged. In the case of ‘Anniversary Flowers’ the viewer questions the fact of a wedding dress laying in, what seems to be, a partly dug grave and why wild spring flowers appear to grow on it.

Marilyn Kyle is a practicing artist and former teacher and lecturer. She has an MA from UAL (Wimbledon) and an M.Ed from the University of Exeter. Her work has been exhibited in juried shows nationally and internationally and is held in private collections. She was included in Procreate Project’s initial 2015 Zines project, launched at the Women’s Art Library and was also selected for Project AfterBirth, curated by Mila Oshin of DIEP. As a young woman (in the late 1970s/early 1980s) she was a ‘country’ member of ‘Fanny Adams’ and has always striven to find and make her place as a woman and an artist.