Maman

This summer, Maman 1999 by Louise Bourgeois will be at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for all to see, for free, at any hour.

Standing more than 9 metres high and 10 metres wide, and made of bronze, steel and marble, this enormous sculpture will be installed on the forecourt of the Art Gallery’s South Building as an unmissable first encounter with the work of the trailblazing French–American artist.

Bourgeois’s giant spider sculptures have entranced people around the world, with permanent installations, including at Tate Modern in the UK and Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, and numerous temporary installations, including in Greece in 2022 at Athen’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.

This is the first time Maman will be presented in Australia, on loan from The Easton Foundation in New York, thanks to the generous support of exhibition patrons including Rosie Williams and John Grill AO, Victoria Taylor, Alenka Tindale and Ginny and Leslie Green.

Maman is a homage to the mother – a rarity in the history of monumental sculpture, which is crowded with heroic male figures.

In Bourgeois’s art, spiders relate to her mother Joséphine, a tapestry restorer, who the artist described as ‘deliberate, clever, patient, soothing ... and [as] useful as a spider’.

Like Joséphine, a spider is precise and constructive, with a talent for weaving. Like an artist, a spider works with her body to create shelter and structure. ‘If you bash into the web of a spider,‘ Bourgeois said, ‘she doesn‘t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.‘

‘Maman’ is a term of childlike familiarity, similar to ‘mum’ or ‘mummy’ rather than ‘mother’. The intimacy of this language only heightens our sense of the fantastical size and power of this particular spider. She seems battle-ready with her armoured limbs and belly loaded with marble eggs. Who wouldn’t want Maman as their protector? Who wouldn’t fear to provoke her?

The largest spider sculpture that Bourgeois ever made, Maman is a prelude to the almost 130 works in the ticketed exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?, which is on display in the Art Gallery’s North Building from 25 November 2023 to 28 April 2024 as part of the Sydney International Art Series.

You can also listen to an audio description of Maman on our free audio guide, Dora.