WE ARE DAUGHTERS
BEFORE WE ARE MOTHERS (2026)
Created as part of the MOTHER group show with The Feminine Urge Collective. Humber street, Hull.
Curated by Lucy Brooke.
We are Daughters Before we are Mothers (2026)
A four part piece encapsulating the idea of inherited motherhood, and the traits we carry, or end with ourselves. Created as part of the MOTHER group show, curated by Lucy Brooke, featuring work from 18 artists exploring motherhood, matrescence, and the complicated relationships between self and mother.
Campbell stands proud with an ancestry rich with wonderful mothers, beautiful, responsible, generous, intelligent women. But, it's easy to forget that the women we admire didn't just spawn into the planet with all this wisdom, they were once young girls too.
Painted left to right are the mothers in Campbell's direct ancestry line, starting with Rio's great nana and nana (left), and ending with a self portrait (right). Portraying the mothers simultaneously next to their own baby images creates a contrast of perceptions, and the journey every woman takes in the process of becoming an adult. See the women in the work through the lens of the daughter, not the mother, and you soon see the little girl that lives within them all. All the dreams they sacrificed, the first loves, heartbreaks, inequalities, and hardships. It was the girl that did that, to become the mother.
The baby, innocent and new, and the mother, controlled and maternal. These women endured innumerable hardships to become who they are today, learning, practicing and nurturing traits we so often take for granted - and they are to thank for the entire bloodline to come.
To a degree, sexist attitudes still control, press and limit the idea of the Mother. The voice of women is unheard in the bellows of a modern capitalist society where human nature is neglected or inferiorised. Womanhood and femininity is a gift, and should you want to accept it, there is so much power in its essence - but this side of the coin still remains covered by the heavy hand of a male dominated perspective.
Campbell believes that our personality traits are passed down biologically, as well as conditionally. Keeping the compositions near identical throughout the four canvases helped replicate the continuum in creative energy that has travelled through the fingers of her family for generations. From great nana sewing and baking, nana Julie sewing, my mam hairdressing, and finally Rio painting. From art, needlework or cooking to holding their child, the hands of these women are pieces of art themselves.
Looking at the last piece, you will see it ends with a self portrait from the artist. As a queer person, an ever growing responsibility to decide on wanting children clouds the artist - and the decision is not a clear one. Motherhood is already complicated, and being queer adds a layer of complexity to the process. Interestingly, all the women, including Rio in the Self-portrait, are the same age in their adult portrayal in the work, being around 23-26. At 24, Rio lays slap bang in the middle of that figure, with tick of the biological clock becoming gradually louder as the years go on. As beautiful as these traits and line of female ancestry is; the harsh duality of it is that it is on the shoulders of the artist, and her sister, to continue.
'Some things are too precious to die. But it will be the girl in me, not the mother, that decides. '