Alice Fraser: GODAM DOGMA
In GODAM DOGMA, Alice Fraser鈥檚 paintings stage an intervention into the psychic orthodoxy of motherhood and the archetype of the bad mum. Neither a mother herself, nor the child of a bad mum, Fraser approaches the maternal as myth, projection, and academic obsession. The exhibition emerges not from personal trauma, but from within the psychoanalytic training space she is currently in where maternal failure is framed as both the root of all suffering and the sacred origin of subjectivity.
Fraser asks: what does it mean to make art about bad mums when you haven鈥檛 had one鈥攚hen the 鈥榖ad mum鈥� is less a memory than a theory? What does it mean to be trained to think maternally while suspended in the limbo of wanting motherhood, haunted by hypothetical children and potential failures? What happens when the language of care becomes clinical doctrine鈥攔itualised, pathologised, and so abstracted it forgets the body it began with?
Leaning on, and laughing at, Melanie Klein鈥檚 theory of the 鈥榞ood breast / bad breast鈥� dichotomy, where infants split the maternal breast into good (nurturing) and bad (withholding) objects and don鈥檛 link them to a holistic idea of mother, Fraser swerves to good breast, bad breath (2025), collapsing psychoanalytic gravitas into something bodily, dumb, and hilarious. In what would usually carry a heavy moral load, where the maternal, in this early abstracted conception of a baby鈥檚 brain is both source of salvation and trauma, shifts from a symbolic psychoanalytic function to something mundane. The abject intimacy of bad breath over the mythic idealisation of maternal care. It deflates the gravitas of Klein鈥檚 model, undermining its seriousness with a Freudian slip that repositions the maternal body not as archetype but as tired, real, and slightly gross. Like, yeah, I鈥檝e got milk, but I also stink and I hate you rn.
The paintings in GODAM DOGMA deflate the clinical solemnity of maternal idealisation, replacing the sacred with the abject: milk and mucus, desire and disgust, love and morning breath. The joke lands with precision鈥攊t鈥檚 not just a gag, it鈥檚 a resistance. A refusal to take seriously the impossible task of maternal perfection. Fraser鈥檚 work is glamorous, shabby, and emotionally unruly, drawing visual cues from childhood illustration, lowbrow internet humour, and the gooey, contradictory affects of longing and revulsion. Madonna鈥檚 The English Roses sits alongside Mumsnet hysteria and Lacanian aphorisms in a world where the maternal is both pop and prophecy. This is not autobiography, but it鈥檚 not cold theory either, it鈥檚 something stranger: a deeply felt study of ideas too often treated like facts.
Through a queasy mix of romance and revulsion, GODAM DOGMA explores how therapy-speak has seeped into online cultural life, offering diagnosis as identity, and language as balm, bludgeon, or meme. Fraser doesn鈥檛 parody psychoanalysis so much as pressure-test it, pushing at its limits and laughing when it folds. If the maternal has become a moral good, Fraser paints it as something more chaotic: contradictory, exhausted, slippery, and possibly fictional. In her world, there is no perfect mum. There might not even be a real one. Just theory, bad breath, milk, blame鈥攁nd the hope, maybe, of love.
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In GODAM DOGMA, Alice Fraser鈥檚 paintings stage an intervention into the psychic orthodoxy of motherhood and the archetype of the bad mum. Neither a mother herself, nor the child of a bad mum, Fraser approaches the maternal as myth, projection, and academic obsession. The exhibition emerges not from personal trauma, but from within the psychoanalytic training space she is currently in where maternal failure is framed as both the root of all suffering and the sacred origin of subjectivity.
Fraser asks: what does it mean to make art about bad mums when you haven鈥檛 had one鈥攚hen the 鈥榖ad mum鈥� is less a memory than a theory? What does it mean to be trained to think maternally while suspended in the limbo of wanting motherhood, haunted by hypothetical children and potential failures? What happens when the language of care becomes clinical doctrine鈥攔itualised, pathologised, and so abstracted it forgets the body it began with?
Leaning on, and laughing at, Melanie Klein鈥檚 theory of the 鈥榞ood breast / bad breast鈥� dichotomy, where infants split the maternal breast into good (nurturing) and bad (withholding) objects and don鈥檛 link them to a holistic idea of mother, Fraser swerves to good breast, bad breath (2025), collapsing psychoanalytic gravitas into something bodily, dumb, and hilarious. In what would usually carry a heavy moral load, where the maternal, in this early abstracted conception of a baby鈥檚 brain is both source of salvation and trauma, shifts from a symbolic psychoanalytic function to something mundane. The abject intimacy of bad breath over the mythic idealisation of maternal care. It deflates the gravitas of Klein鈥檚 model, undermining its seriousness with a Freudian slip that repositions the maternal body not as archetype but as tired, real, and slightly gross. Like, yeah, I鈥檝e got milk, but I also stink and I hate you rn.
The paintings in GODAM DOGMA deflate the clinical solemnity of maternal idealisation, replacing the sacred with the abject: milk and mucus, desire and disgust, love and morning breath. The joke lands with precision鈥攊t鈥檚 not just a gag, it鈥檚 a resistance. A refusal to take seriously the impossible task of maternal perfection. Fraser鈥檚 work is glamorous, shabby, and emotionally unruly, drawing visual cues from childhood illustration, lowbrow internet humour, and the gooey, contradictory affects of longing and revulsion. Madonna鈥檚 The English Roses sits alongside Mumsnet hysteria and Lacanian aphorisms in a world where the maternal is both pop and prophecy. This is not autobiography, but it鈥檚 not cold theory either, it鈥檚 something stranger: a deeply felt study of ideas too often treated like facts.
Through a queasy mix of romance and revulsion, GODAM DOGMA explores how therapy-speak has seeped into online cultural life, offering diagnosis as identity, and language as balm, bludgeon, or meme. Fraser doesn鈥檛 parody psychoanalysis so much as pressure-test it, pushing at its limits and laughing when it folds. If the maternal has become a moral good, Fraser paints it as something more chaotic: contradictory, exhausted, slippery, and possibly fictional. In her world, there is no perfect mum. There might not even be a real one. Just theory, bad breath, milk, blame鈥攁nd the hope, maybe, of love.
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