Delightful and disgusting – Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures and Caroline Walker: Mothering review

★★★★☆ / ★★★★★The Hepworth Wakefield Chadwick’s work ranges across media, from molten chocolate to tonsils and intestines, while Walker’s attentive paintings depict maternal pleasure and pain. Both offer startling insight into women’s livesYou’d be hard pressed to find a more alluring opening to a show than this: a bubbling pool consisting of 800kg of molten milk chocolate oozing seductively, filling the gallery with a sweet aroma and a soft, steady gurgling. On the walls brightly coloured, circular photographs of orchids, gerberas, sweet peas and chrysanthemums repeat the circular shape of the chocolate pool.But for artist Helen Chadwick – whose Life Pleasures show at the Hepworth Wakefield is the largest retrospective of her work – pleasure is never that far from pain. It is not long before that thick, gloopy chocolate starts to smell sickly, the scent overwhelming the senses; the mechanism inside making the liquid bubble artificially. On closer inspection, the petals in the photographs are suspended in a variety of less pleasant liquids – industrial hand cleaner, window spray, washing up liquid – and the suggestive shapes of tonsils, testes and vaginas begin to emerge. Continue reading...

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