New Work
Aurora Andrews Curated by Caitlin MacBride
May 9 - June 11, 2022

Hudson House is delighted to present “New Work” Aurora Andrews’ first solo exhibition with the gallery.

‘Suddenly I was spending most of my time sitting and lying down, nursing, looking at the baby. I worried a lot about the future, trying to think how to be ready for it. At the same time, I knew that this experience would be over very quickly and it was important to be present in it as much as possible. I made drawings to focus my attention in the moment, to record it, and also to distract and entertain myself.

I thought about all the other mothers out there now and in the past, how they might have felt. I read about the history of the breast pump. I watched videos of chimpanzees nursing in trees. I looked at paintings of the Virgin Mary. I read a few firsthand accounts of motherhood, and I made these paintings from my drawings.’ - Aurora Andrews

I often think about how when you are an artist with artist friends you are on a journey together... you get to watch them discover new ways of painting and new parts of themselves through painting. Watching this series that developed after Aurora became a mom was really moving and I felt like I learned something watching them come into being, multiplying in her studio, growing and glowing. My first thought was about the painter Paula Modersohn Becker - the first known woman to paint a nude self portrait and to paint

herself nude and pregnant. She also has a painting of herself on her side nursing her baby which has been written about as clearly from a mother’s perspective as it’s the most comfortable nursing position. I see Aurora’s paintings in this tradition and yet adding to it as the gaze is looking down upon one’s body and at the infant nursing. It’s a “gaze” I don’t believe I’ve ever seen in painting before. I read somewhere recently that there is new research that believes the Venus of Willendorf and similar pieces were actually made from a woman looking down on her body- that the perspective lead to the foreshortened roundness of the limbs. This angle Aurora captures says so much about the attempts to see oneself, especially when you are learning to give your body to someone else. Her process of sketching while her baby nurses is part of a long dialogue, both in art and in labor, about how mothers might be able to still make art and the eternal fear that one will lose oneself or succumb to sentimentality in the process. The exchange of liquids and color fields holding the bodies in connection create paintings that give us a glimpse into an intimate space. I feelluckytogettosharethesewithyou.- CaitlinMacBride

Aurora Andrews lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has recently been exhibited at 321 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Bannerette (Brooklyn, NY) Fastnet (Brooklyn, NY), Dread Lounge (Los Ángeles, CA) The University of the Arts Bremen (Salzburg, DE) and Collar Works (Troy, NY) She received an MFA in Painting from Bard College.

Caitlin MacBride is an artist based in Hudson, NY. Her work engages material culture and artifacts in an exploration of labor, desire, and belief systems. MacBride has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. She has shown at Fisher Parrish, Heroes, Chapter NY, Real Fine Arts, Greene Naftali, Zach Feuer, Jack Barrett Gallery, Hesse Flatow, and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein among others. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Modern Painters, Art Forum, New York Magazine, and Vogue.com

 Aurora Andrews lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has recently been exhibited at 321 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Bannerette (Brooklyn, NY) Fastnet (Brooklyn, NY), Dread Lounge (Los Ángeles, CA) The University of the Arts Bremen (Salzburg, DE) and Collar Works (Troy, NY) She received an MFA in Painting from Bard College.

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