Do you hear us... are you listening? Spilt Milk Group Show
exhibitions
I have two pieces for sale as part of a group online exhibition hosted by Spilt Milk Gallery.
Enquire about the work via Spilt Milk Gallery.
The Catalogue Series (2007 - 2008)
Collage on graph paper, 42 x 29 cm
The Catalogue Series (2007 - 2008) is one of a series of six collages created during a residency with medical simulator company Limbs & Things. The work repurposes archival catalogue images of the company's midwifery training products as paper quilts on graph paper.
The quilt collage reclaims the surgical blade in an act of creation, and speaks to hidden women's labour and the dichotomy between 'domestic' and 'medical' birth experiences. The traditional quilt block patterns splice together glimpsed triangles, hexagons and diamonds of products ranging from episiotomy suture training models; breastmilk expression trainers; placentas and umbilical cords; and new born babies from their PROMPT birthing trainers for training on C-sections and a range of other birth interventions and delivery techniques.
Each collage focuses on products from a year or two year span, selected at random intervals throughout Limbs & Things' 33 years in industry, from their founding in 1990 by medical illustrator Margot Cooper. The collages are a visual representation of product changes, improvements, adaptations and discontinuations, indicating much wider, complex changes in approaches to clinical birth training and new motherhood around the world.
Unheard
Photographic scan on giclee paper, 15 x 15 cm.
Connecting objects across generations, I hold my late father’s scalpel which he used for cutting negatives in his photography studio, scanned as a photographic image - a technique he also used in his personal work. The scalpel in my hand repositions the control, or lack of it, I experienced with the birth of my son - my father’s grandchild he will never know - reflecting on the medicalisation of the birth experience and the perceptions and contradictions of ‘natural’ and ‘medical’ birth journeys.
Spilt Milk:
'Bringing together the diverse voices of the Spilt Milk artist community, our latest online exhibition delves into themes of home, care, labour, and family, and how these intertwine with a sense of self as artist, as (m)other. The work featured in this exhibition implores us to not only stop and listen closely to these voices but to really hear what they are saying.
This online exhibition was curated through an open submission to members, without a defined theme, nor a selection process. All members were invited to have their work included. The process of removing the selection committee allowed for a more democratic way of exhibiting our artists’ works, free of judgement or censoring and for all voices to be heard with equal importance.'