The Milky Way

An exhibition and events programme promoting infant feeding in public, responding to the national tour of a multimedia artwork and infant feeding chair.

The Milky Way is part of a touring programme for Feed – an arts-based project that promotes inclusive, sustainable approaches to infant feeding and public space. Core to The Milky Way is Feeding Chair, a multimedia artwork and infant feeding chair which has travelled to places including Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham, Scarborough, Cardiff. Its visit to Glasgow is the only Scottish stop on the tour.

This collaborative artwork has generated different partnerships and responses with each cultural venue it has visited, and in GoMA it has resulted in an events programme, a publication with creative group Mammas Write, and a new commission with the artist Jessica Ramm.

More about the different elements of The Milky Way

Feeding Chair (2022–ongoing)
13 September 2025 to 9 January 2026 (Gallery 4)

Feeding Chair is a specially designed chair with an integrated tablet, which will be on display in GoMA’s Domestic Bliss exhibition (Gallery 4) until next year. Paintings on the chair’s back and exterior are by Jade de Montserrat. On the tablet are audio works by artists Krissi Musiol, Nicola Singh, Magda Stawarska and Charlotte Oliver, together with videos about infant feeding, gender and public space.

Visitors will be welcome to take a seat and explore the content on the tablet. Those involved in the project have selected books and zines that are also available to read. Parents and carers are invited to breast, chest or bottle feed their baby – to take the space, and take their time.

The work challenges negative attitudes towards feeding in public and encourages conversations about care, vulnerability, representation and human milk.

Lent by Elaine Speight, co-curator of In Certain Places, University of Lancashire

The Milky Way: Feed at GoMA
Saturday 13 September 2025, 11am to 12 pm

Marking the opening of the programme, members of the public are invited to bring their baby or toddler, take up the whole gallery and feed their infants, in any way they feel comfortable. The curators, artists and community collaborators behind Feed and The Milky Way will be there to introduce their work.

Mammas Write: The Milky Way (2025)
Risoprint hand bound publication

Supported by GoMA’s learning programme and the Feed project, Mammas Write, a collective of mothers determined to continue their creative lives within the chaos of new motherhood, have met regularly since Summer 2024. This new publication, which will be included in the Feeding Chair’s resources, was created with their babies and toddlers very much present, in arms, joined at the nipple, woven into the work. Here, mothering, feeding and creativity are inseparable.

The contributors use writing and image-making to rediscover themselves, and this book emerged in the shared solidarity of their weekly sessions, capturing the beauty, mess, and power of their mothering and breastfeeding journeys.

Jessica Ramm: Hard Edges Soft Layers
13 September to 30 November 2025
COMMONSpace (Gallery 2)

In a new commission for The Milky Way, the artist Jessica Ramm has explored vulnerability in relation to motherhood, drawing from the fear, shame and wonder she experienced in the early days of parenthood. Hard Edges Soft Layers is an exhibition of new works that came out of her personal reflections alongside research into female collective action, histories of witchcraft, and portrayals of motherhood and breastfeeding in art.

Information and Support

As this exhibition programme explores themes of breastfeeding and motherhood, we have created a list of websites for anyone seeking advice and support on related issues. View the page by following this link

CREDITS

Feed was developed by Elaine Speight and Vicky Carr as part of In Certain Places, a public art research project based at the University of Lancashire. Feeding Chair was designed with Textbook Studio and fabricators M3 Industries and is presented with the support of Arts Council England. Feeding Chair was lent by Elaine Speight.

The Milky Way and this iteration are funded by the Arts Council of England and Glasgow Life.

Visit the Feed website

Header image: Feeding Chair at Ikon Gallery (June 2024), photo by Tod Jones.