birth.art

- rethinking birth through art in the age of porn and plastic surgery

An exhibition of contemporary art, ruminating on the subject of childbirth
ACU Gallery // 14–30 June 2011

The impassioned debates surrounding choices in childbirth continue to divide health care workers, scholars, governments and the community.

Despite ongoing media and community attention, birth continues to receive minimal representation in the world of art, over shadowed as always by its notorious and high profile primal counterparts: sex and death.

Sensationalised media portrayals, ‘reality TV’ exposés, and fictitious accounts of birthing displayed in film or television often trivialise the process of giving birth with overtones of emergency, panic, pain or suffering. In the age of porn and plastic surgery the myriad issues facing feminism can be confounding.

birth.art seeks to explore the awkward relationship that has developed between birth and feminism in a technocratic culture and to set a new direction for experiences and philosophies of the maternal. Putting a flag in the soil of cultural expressions around childbirth, birth.art fleshes out ideas about the primary event experienced by each person on the earth. It endeavours to enliven women to courageously rethink the possibilities for their own birthing experiences.

Illuminating birth through a range of media by a diverse group of Australian artists, the work in birth.art reveals the personal and political, exploring the intrinsic beauty, humour, power, fear, insight and inspiration that birth can provoke.

Curated by two working mothers, this exhibition also tackles issues of work/life balance in its very making!

Who:
Featuring artwork by Davina Adamson, Sarah Beetson, Violeta Capovska, Sally Davis & Selena de Carvalho, Deborah Kelly & Tina Fiveash, Rachel Peachey, Al Stark, Arlene TextaQueen, Anne Wilson and Anne Zahalka.
Curators: Tilly Morris and Jasmine Salomon.

When:
14 – 30 June 2011 (exhibition days Weds – Sun, 12noon-5pm)
Official opening 14 June (6–8 pm) with guest speaker and author of the book ‘The Divided Heart: Art & Motherhood’ Rachel Power.

Where:
Australian Catholic University Gallery, 26 Brunswick St Fitzroy, VIC, 3065

For more info, to arrange an interview or to obtain high resolution images, contact:
Tilly Morris / tillymorris@iprimus.com.au or
Jasmine Salomon / jasmineproust@gmail.com

Images above:
(Left) Anne Zahalka, Delivery Suite [Details], Archival Ink Jet Print, 2011; (Right) Arlene Texta Queen, Chaos Happens All The Time, Felt-tip pen on paper, 2011.

This project is supported by: City of Yarra & ACU University.

Firewood & baby sleeps

Since having a baby recently I have got to know my back alley extremely well.
I see men fixing rooftops, drivers retreat from secluded garages, people arriving home I have never noticed before.
What has become immediately obvious to me, is the way I seem strange to these people performing motherhood in the back alley, pushing my baby on the cobblestones twice daily praying she will go to sleep. I ponder where the public representations of mother are to be found? Certainly in the playground there is a monopoly of prams, an avalanche of children, occasionally a kid being roused on & other such public acts of motherhood. As I push my babe I usually collect kindling that has fallen over the fences from the tall trees, to maximise my time, in the quest to occasionally find time to write, make art or study Midwifery. I think this must be one of the archaic acts of motherhood, walking a babe to sleep collecting firewood, though I have to say the only time I have seen it is in the Gypsy movies!

Garden & Babies.....

I may be obsessed! But now we have the teenager from the down the street cleaning our house I will have time to Grow a Winter Garden as well as a human!

the Childcare dilemma.

As always, i have a house to clean and an essay to write but first i must remark upon our 'cross- nursing mothers' childcare cooperative'. It's the way forward ladies!

international midwifery!

Breakfast inspiration, i love what these guys at Earth birth are doing.

something from the archives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev1F3kPm1D8&feature=autofb
cleanliness is next to Godliness ladies & Gents.

An interesting thought
If you were in your most vulnerable position you had possibly experienced thus far in your life,
You were feeling an almighty pain take over your body over & over again
and someone offered you a possible way out would you take it? (I would.)
If it were sanctioned by the society of the day to do so?
In birth the only women who avoid this nasty little checkmate, are those who birth at home. Due to an intense fear in our present society and out of pocket expenses, very few women are in this luxurious position of bearing the immense yet incredible pain of childbirth. Women choose to birth at home or in a birth center knowing full well that they will be protected by their inability to ask for drugs. Drugs that unfortunately may impede their labour & lead to traumatic intervention such as; instrumental delivery (which has been described by the very sexy 70yr old michel Odent as archaic), caesarean section (or vaginal bypass as it is seductively called), augmentation with artificial oxytocin (commonplace in some maternity settings) let alone affect a new born baby. In relation to analgesia (or the famous epidural) i concur with Rayes-Greenow when she concludes that:
"although women felt knowledgeable and informed about labour and childbirth pain-management options, they were unable to correctly identify outcomes or risks associated with analgesics."

Rayes-Greenow, C., Roberts, C., McCaffery, K. & Clarke, J. (2006) Knowledge and decision making for labour analgesia of Australian primiparous women. Midwifery 23 (2007, p.139-145) Elsevier.