Wednesday 11 May, 2011 - 5.30pm

Until 5.30pm.

Tickets are still available and can be purchased directly from the information desk on the day; please arrive at least twenty minutes before the event begins to avoid delay. Please call 020 7522 7888 for further information.


Why is the subject of birth rarely engaged with in contemporary art? The Birth Rites Collection, an organisation that collects, researches and produces contemporary artworks on the subject of childbirth, presents a symposium exploring the social, political and artistic implications of work around the subject of childbirth in contemporary art.

Contributions on the day from academics, artists and curators deal with: sexuality and childbirth; changing art practice post childbirth; taboos and censorship around representations of childbirth; the implications a lack of the representation of childbirth has on the status of women within society; the male perspective on childbirth. Speakers include Lisa Baraitser, Jemima Brown, Matt Collier, Helen Knowles, Martina Mullaney, Liv Pennington, Imogen Tyler, Eti Wade, Johnathan Waller and Hermione Wiltshire.

Programme

11 -11.20am -  Introduction: Anna FC Smith and Helen Knowles

11.30am – 12.15pm – ‘Private View: Public Birth: Feminist Commons’: Lisa Baraitser and Imogen Tyler.

12.25 – 1.10pm – ‘The Maternal Subject In Photography’: Eti Wade 

1.10 – 2.15pm - Lunch

2.15 – 3pm – ‘Birth as confrontational image’: Helen Knowles, Johnathan Waller, Hermione Wiltshire.

3.10 – 3.50pm – ‘Enemies of Good Art’: Jemima Brown and Martina Mullaney

3.50 – 4.25pm - Break

4.25 – 5.10pm - ‘Science Abstracting Pregnancy’: Matt Collier and Liv Pennington

5.10 – 5.30pm – Round up

www.birthritescollection.org.uk

Bios

Dr Lisa Baraitser is a Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London . She is Programme Director of the new MA Psychosocial Studies. Her research interests are in gender and sexuality, motherhood, feminist epistemologies, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and philosophies of ethics, affect and event. Her recent work has centred on the fraught relations, as well as creative tensions, between motherhood, female subjectivity and ethics. It spans an inter-disciplinary arena that takes in contemporary debates in relational, post-Kleinian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, feminism, the ethics of care, philosophies of otherness and event, phenomenology, and the use of autobiographical writing as a feminist research strategy. She is co-founder of the international research network MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics).

Jemima Brown uses sculpture, drawing and time based media to explore formal sculptural decision making, suggested narrative and social critique. Graduating from an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in London in 1995 she has established her practice as an artist based in London and working internationally. Curatorial and collaborative projects, such as ‘Family Viewing’, (a peripatetic, episodic project), or ‘Enemies of Good Art’, compliment and contextualise Browns work as an artist. Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo show in September 2011 at Standpoint Gallery in London as the recipient of the 2010/11 Mark Tanner Sculpture Award. She has been involved with Enemies of Good Art since 2009, and has a 3 year old son. Further information and images can be seen at www.jemimabrown.com

Matt Collier completed a Masters in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art 2009, and a BA Fine Art at University of the Arts, London 2004. Matt has shown in various exhibitions, prizes and awards. Currently living and working in Oxfordshire.  A piece of his work has been recently acquired by the Birth Rites Collection.

Helen Knowles is an artist and curator of the Birth Rites collection. Currently a British Council, Young Creative Entrepreneur, she has curated and commissioned work for internationally renowned projects which include; 'Birth Rites', Manchester Museum/Glasgow Science Centre and ‘Don’t Cross the line’. Other shows include ‘Agitate’ and ‘Radio Halo’. She has shown work in the ‘One Tree’ exhibition and Gallery Oldham’s touring show ‘Wild flowers - their Art and Science’. Recent shows include 'Walls are Talking' Whitworth Art Gallery (2010) and 'After London' (2010) Sassoon Gallery, Peckham. Her work is in The Whitworth Art Gallery Collection, Tate Collection, Birth Rites Collection and Gallery Oldham Collection. She works as a freelancer leading workshops with The Whitworth art Gallery and the House of Illustration.

Martina Mullaney's practice explores notions of community and the disappearance of civil associations. After the birth of her daughter in 2009 she started the movement Enemies of Good Art, which began as a series of public meetings at the Whitechapel Gallery, located with the installation The Nature of the Beast. She lives in London , where she received a Masters Degree in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2004. Her work has been exhibited at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York , Freankel Gallery in San Francisco , Gallery of Photography in Dublin , Ireland , Blue Sky Gallery in Portland , Oregon and Ffotogallery in Wales . Recent projects have been supported by the British Council and the Red Mansion Foundation. She is represented by the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. http://www.enemiesofgoodart.org/

Liv Pennington received an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2003. Her work has been exhibited in such UK Galleries as the Lisson Gallery and the Jerwood Space; Internationally in the Bild Museet ( Sweden ), Oslo Kunsthall ( Norway ). Her work is included in the collections of Robin Wight, Christopher Rauschenberg and the Grosvenor Estate. A piece of his work has been recently aquired by the Birth Rites Collection.

Dr Imogen Tyler is a Sociology Senior Lecturer & Leverhulme Fellow at Lancaster University . Her research interests include Maternal Publics: Bodies, Identities, Practices. She has published widely in this area, most recently editing a special issue of Feminist Review on `Birth' (2009). She also sits on the editorial board of a new journal, Studies in the Maternal. She co-directed (with Dr Caroline Gatrell) a research project entitled Hard Labour: The Cultural Politics of Reproduction for which she organised a workshop on Maternal Bodies (2005) and an international conference, Birth (2007). She is currently working (with Dr Celia Roberts and Dr Candice Satchwell) on a European-funded research project on Childbirth Organisations in the UK 2009-2011. She is am co-writing a monograph on Maternal Publics and Counterpublics with Dr Lisa Baraitser.

Eti Wade is an artist and academic. She is the programme leader for the MA Photography at the University of West London. Her photographic practice is a personal investigation of the limits of maternal subjectivity expressed through photography and video and she also writes on the subject of the maternal gaze in contemporary photographic art. She is a mother of three boys aged 18, 11 and 2 and lives in North London.

Jonathan Waller is an artist and senior lecturer at Coventry University . He has an    MA in Fine Art, Chelsea School of Art, London (1985) and BA (Hons) in Fine Art, Coventry (Lanchester) Polytechnic, Coventry (1983) His solo exhibitions include

True Adventures, National Maritime Museum, Falmouth (2005), Box Assemblages, Lanchester Gallery (2003) and Birth, New End Gallery, London (1997. His group shows include Kunst Europa - 74 kunstvereine zeigen kunst aus 18 Landern, Karlsruhe , Germany (1991), The New British Painting, Cincinnati Contemporary Art Centre, touring to Chicago , Milwaukee , Winston Salem, Grand Rapids and New York , USA (1988-1990) and London , Glasgow , New York , Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (1988). Amongst many awards and grants he has won First Prize, Midland View 3, Nottingham (1994), British Council Grant: working visit to New York, USA (1990) and Mark Rothko Memorial Trust: travelling scholarship to USA (1988).

Hermione Wiltshire is an Artist and Senior Lecturer at the Royal College of Art in the Photography Department.  Although originally trained in Sculpture, she positions her work between the object and the image – a physical presence in the world and an imaginary one residing the imagination.  She has produced sculpture, photographs, an animation and has exhibited extensively. She has lectured widely and is presently developing a series of theoretical seminars called the Physical Image’ with Susan Butler. She is one of the original artists from the Birth Rites Exhibition.

Image: Liv Pennington, 2006, 80 x 76 cm
Digital C type on Aluminium, Birth Rites Collection

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