The Milky Way
Gallery 4, in Domestic Bliss
13 September 2025 – 9 January 2025

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.

The Milky Way is presented by Glasgow Life, the charity which promotes mental, physical and economic wellbeing in the city through culture and sport.  There is also a page on the Glasgow Life website with resources and links if you are affected by any of the issues in this programme.

Feeding Chair, 2022–ongoing
Chair with sound and video
Lent by Elaine Speight, co-curator of In Certain Places, University of Lancashire

Feeding Chair isa specially designed chair with an integrated tablet, which will beon display in GoMA’s Domestic Bliss exhibition (Gallery 4) from 13 September 2025–9 January 2026.  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.

Feed is a collaborative art project that challenges social stigmas around human milk and promotes inclusive, sustainable approaches to infant feeding and public spaces. Working with cultural venues, public health teams, artists and communities, Feed’s ambition is to create opportunities for people to share their experiences and challenge negative social attitudes towards human milk and mothering.

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

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 January 2023. 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.