Lauren McLaughlin

My work attempts to dissect systems of power through the lens of my own experiences as a working class woman and lone mother. I employ processes of destruction to create alternative narratives through use of collaged found images, disrupted text, and repurposed everyday domestic materials. My work has explored topics including maternal mental health, reproductive justice, unpaid domestic labour and economic inequality to highlight the injustices of the crisis of care and the lack of caring infrastructures in our capitalist society. 

Through my participatory projects I explore how these failing systems affect mothers, carers and their communities: economically, emotionally, physically and culturally. These projects have included ‘Spilt Milk Gallery CIC’; a social enterprise I set up to support the work of artists who identify as mothers. ‘Moanifesto’; a collaborative project which highlighted the invisible struggles of the single mother artist, and ‘Just a mum?’; an installation and exhibition created with young mums from an underserved area of North Edinburgh.