Patricia Townsend: ECCLESIA MATER

Patricia Townsend's series of iconic faces, tightly cropped and set into constraining metal panels, referencing nuns' habits, explores the ambivalent relationship between God, Church and the feminine. Despite having an all-male hierarchy and offering masculine images of God, the Catholic Church is referred to as 'Mother' and motherhood is enshrined in the asexual concept of the Virgin. However, earlier religious thought endowed the feminine with knowledge and power. Townsend draws parallels between the Church's relationship with her members and the mother/daughter relationship, highlighting conflicts between the desire for nurturing or containment and the fear of constriction.

Patricia Townsend has studied psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and is a member of the Foundation for Psychotherapy and Counselling. She has exhibited widely and her latest exhibition 'Ecclesia Mater' explores the ambivalent relationship between God, Church and the feminine through the metaphor of motherhood. In particular, it is suggested that the individual's relationship with the Church, like a child's relationship with her mother, may be highly conflicted. On one hand, there is a longing for nurturing and the containment of anxieties. On the other hand is a fear of constriction and the subjection of the individual to a more powerful presence. Her work hangs on black metal panels and the text is inscribed at right angles to the photograph so the viewer is obliged to turn his or her head to read it. This signifies the discomforting pull between the image of Church as consoling and containing as suggested by the quotations and the constriction suggested by the metal structures.

The Obsessions Group Exhibitors, Patricia Townsend, Rosy Martin, Izzy Ramsay and Gina Glover, will be conducting a seminar and discussion on Saturday 21st October