LIQUID GOLD

In Collaboration with Lactation Consultant Gobnait Murphy

2021–2022

LIQUID GOLD (2021-22) is a socially engaged, participatory art project led by artist Maeve Collins in collaboration with lactation consultant Gobnait Murphy. The title refers to colostrum—the first milk a mother produces after birth, rich in immunity and protection—and became both a metaphor and a material for exploring nourishment, hospitality, and resistance.

Over seventy mothers across North Clare, including residents of Lisdoonvarna’s Direct Provision Centre, took part. Breastfeeding is the most personal act of hospitality: the offering of one’s own body as sustenance and protection. Yet in Direct Provision—where mothers lack kitchens, privacy, or agency over daily routines—this hospitality collides with systems of control. Formula, provided freely but without choice and support for breastfeeding, continues the long legacy of colonial imposition on maternal cultures worldwide, where breastfeeding traditions have been disrupted by industrial and commercial agendas.

LIQUID GOLD created nomadic, creative spaces where these realities could be shared, critiqued, and reimagined. Mothers were invited to taste and share “golden milk” (turmeric-infused, with healing and lactation benefits) and golden muffins fitted with pipettes—gestures that honoured the endurance of pumping and the constant offering mothers make of themselves. Participants also used turmeric pigment to draw their breastfeeding journeys, mapping exhaustion, resilience, and joy in embodied marks.

These gestures extend Collins’ ongoing inquiry into acts of hospitality—asking how the most intimate, bodily offerings can counter systemic exclusions and generate solidarity.