The exhibition takes its title from Aesop’s fable, in which the members of the body rebel against the belly, believing her idle and self-indulgent. The feet stand still, the hands won’t lift a finger, and the mouth refuses food. The members soon find that they can’t survive without the belly and repent their folly, acknowledging that each part of the body sustains the rest. The artists in this exhibition reimagine this figure as flesh, myth and landscape, embracing her as a container of multitudes. They shift well-worn perspectives on the body politic to reclaim the belly as a symbol of resilience and a seat of feminine power.

In her accompanying essay, celebrated playwright, novelist and screenwriter Suzie Miller — the author of Prima Facie (2019) and Jailbaby (2023) — reflects on The Belly and the Members as “a courageous and form-bending exploration of the human body. The body has been co-opted, admired, sold, touched, tasted, beaten, imprinted, raped, medicalised, spiritualised, colonised, traded, desired, used, killed, legislated against, denigrated, objectified, sexualised and de-sexualised. … We are confronted by the unexamined sense of our own form, made aware of how we have been trained to accept control and definition. This exhibition is a lens through which we see an exquisite new mode of self-determination.”