With Woman

‘With Woman’ hand painted medical screen, video projection with sound. 2019.

This body of work was created during my residency with The Birth Rites Collection and the Department of Midwifery at Kings College London in 2019. The residency and resulting works were produced with thanks to funding from Creative Scotland, The Kings College Cultural Institute, The Hope Scott Trust and The Birth Rites Collection. During my residency I began to ‘crowd-source’ single words from mothers which reflected their own birth experience. The collected words ranged from ‘empowering’ and ‘liberating’ to ‘traumatic’ and ‘confusing’. The words were then hand painted onto fabric using the standard NHS font and colour scheme and sewn into a three panel medical screen. The clinical aesthetic of the medical screen is contrasted with a video projection of a blood red gushing waterfall and the overpowering sound of a fetal heartbeat.