ArtBlog

''Curator, Helen Knowles, spoke to the audience first from the perspective of a mother. She described the differences in her state of mind following an emergency caesarean section with her first child and when she had given birth to her second child at home. She  explained how her reflections on this spurred her to explore the subject further through setting up Birth Rites.

She went on to speak as a curator, pointing out the need for contemporary art about childbirth in a culture which is blind to imagery of it. She used images of work made by children at St. Anne's Primary School in Ancoats in Birth Rites workshops as evidence that in our culture we keep the reality of birth at a distance...

 Middle eastern food was accompanied by installments of an erotic short story in three parts. Each place setting had a print showing a cross section of two people engaged in the sex act, covered by a fig leaf on which sat individual starters of figs with marscapone and lemon. Pudding was simply grapes and bars of dark chocolate. Hidden in a one chocolate wrapper was a voucher for a Bassine pool made by Made In Water, Birth Rites' only private sponsor.

Eaves-dropping on conversations around the table it had far departed from the formality of the presentations, to focus on more on subjects such as personal experience and the intimacy of sex and birth.''

Although my practice does not explore childbirth I can relate to 'Womens Issues' being overlooked and ignored. Since being diagnosed with Endometriosis my eyes have been opened to the lack of support and research into women's reproductive and hormonal health. Despite women occupying 51% of the population we are still seen as 'other',I think this is most obvious in Hollywood film..blockbusters are designed to cater for a male audience that both sexes can engage with, yet specifically female lead films are not as well received. 'Birth Rites' project shows the art world also echoes the patriarchy of Hollywood as the artwork was not well received my art-spaces/galleries.

The event/dinner party Birth Rites created in the disused swimming pool was an exciting and original way to bring people together in an engaging way, I love how the environment stimulated discussion. I will be drawing on this event as inspiration for my own practise and as part of the Art&Audience unit. 

Death, love and war have always been major themes for artists - but that other fundamental life experience, childbirth, has been ignored. Joanna Moorhead visits a long-overdue exhibition on the subject

For Hermione Wiltshire, senior lecturer in photography at the Royal College of Art, the starting point for her work was Gustave Courbet's famous painting, The Origin of the World, which focuses directly on a female crotch. "The painting epitomises the male fantasy of the female genitals," she says. "It's the view of the man looking up the woman's skirt." Wiltshire was more interested by how women themselves view their bodies, particularly at the moment of giving birth. To that end, one of the works she has chosen to exhibit is a radical midwifery image from the 1970s showing a baby's head crowning, while the mother's face lights up. "Pornographic images tend to delink the vagina from the face," says Wiltshire. "This image changes that by showing the woman's face as well as her genitals."

Wiltshire's own photography for the exhibition features three larger-than-life images of women practising antenatal yoga, emphasising the capacity of women's bodies to give birth naturally. "We spend a lot of time thinking about the external things that can be done to help a baby out - the medical intervention and so on," says Wiltshire. "I wanted to focus on what the body can do from within."

Self Portrait Inspired by Frida exploring the tropes of femininity.