I was tired when I went to see Milk at the Wellcome Collection, having been up for much of the night feeding my baby. In European and Christian imagery, one sign said, ‘a lactating woman often represents fertility, charity and abundance’, but I was not feeling full of the milk of human kindness. Nor was I in the mood to be lectured about the evils of feeding children milk.
As it turned out, this wasn’t really a show about milky motherhood. Cows and women produce milk but it’s unfashionable to dwell too much on that detail. The exhibition has a few sculptures of women; mostly they are headless. A massive black udder greets visitors as they arrive, but the focus of the show is on milk as a ‘highly politicised liquid’. It quickly becomes a talking-to on the naughty step about why we must wean ourselves off capitalism’s teat.
This quickly becomes a talking-to on the naughty step about why we must wean ourselves off capitalism’s teat
Milk is pure, white and strength-giving, so, as the exhibition spells out at every possible opportunity: milk is pure white power.
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