Events
Summer School 2024
The Birth Rites Collection Summer School is back. This year’s Summer School will take place at the University of Kent, from Monday 1st - Thursday 4th July. Online access is also available at a reduced cost.
Birth Rites Collection’s Summer School is a unique programme of lectures, workshops, seminars and one-to-one tutorials. Four intensive days will introduce you to the collection and facilitate a dialogue between you, your practice and the artworks. The course is led by artist & BRC Curator Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan.
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood
An exciting exhibition opened 9 March and an important step forward within the collective work on art, mothering and care work: ‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’, curated by Hettie Judah for Hayward Gallery Touring, starting at Arnolfini.
✨ Special congratulations to some artists whom we have supported and collaborated with through conversations, our BRC Summer School and through the commissioning & acquisition of donations over the past 16 years: Leni Dothan, Hermione Wiltshire, Cassie Arnold and Carmen Winant. ✨
New Artist Commission: Tommy’s National Centre for Preterm Birth Research
We have partnered with the newly launched Tommy’s National Centre for Preterm Birth Research and Imperial College London to run a series of participatory commissions over the next 3-5 years. These new artworks will eventually become part of the Birth Rites Collection.
Birth Rites Collection will facilitate 3-5 artists to collaborate with men and women in the community, up and down the UK, to explore important ideas connected with preterm birth.
In First Person Plural
In First Person Plural featuring two works by Judy Chicago from the Birth Rites Collection.
In-person Summer School 2022
This year’s BRC Summer School will take place in-person at the University of Kent, from Monday 5th - Friday 9th September. Book your place now.
BRC Launch at the University of Kent
Join us for the launch of the Birth Rites Collection, installed for the first time across buildings on the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus.
UCL Institute for Women's Health hosts a virtual tour of the Birth Rites Collection
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2022, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health at University College London is hosting three days of free events.
As a part of this programme of events, artist and BRC curator Helen Knowles will give a virtual tour of the Birth Rites Collection on Wednesday, 9 March from 7.30pm - 9pm (GMT).
The tour is open to everyone, free of charge.
Baby Week sponsors a BRC Virtual Tour
We were delighted to host the launch event for Baby Week 2021. Cheshire and Merseyside NHS women’s health and maternity partnership sponsored a virtual tour of the Birth Rites Collection in a joint celebration of Baby Week 2021, Maternity Support Worker Week and the new Northern Baby Week Alliance, delivered in collaboration with the Better Start Bradford’s Baby Week and Baby Week Leeds.
Birth Rites Collection presents ‘Come Home’: a documentary film by Marta Stysiak
Harris Lecture Theatre, Guy’s Campus, King’s College, London, SE1 1UL
Summer School
Birth Rites Collection Summer School is a unique programme of lectures, workshops, seminars and one-to-one tutorials. It will introduce you to the art collection via a pre-recorded video tour and facilitate a dialogue between you, your practice and the artworks. The course is led by Helen Knowles, BRC Curator and artist, Hermione Wiltshire, artist and Senior Lecturer at the Royal College of Art. They will help you to articulate responses to the art collection in a supportive environment.
Blockchain Feasibility Study
On 14 April 2021, the Birth Rites Collection carried out a feasibility study into how it might use blockchain for the benefit of artists and the future of the collection.
The feasibility study explored the possibilities for Birth Rites Collection to make editions of digital works as collectibles for sale. Working with experts in the field, we also considered the benefits and pitfalls of making transparent all contracts via blockchain ledger, evidencing provenance, automating reproduction revenue and guaranteeing profit share to all artists from any sales of works.
Helen Knowles states: “The Birth Rites Collection functions by receiving donations of artworks to the collection from artists. We have always aimed to support and promote each and every artist who donates work to the collection but it is evident that there needs to be a wider rethink about how cultural institutions support artists and their work. Birth Rites Collection feels primed to respond to this demand by engaging with artists, consultants, groups and organisations to change and respond in new ways using digital innovation to redistribute wealth and value in the cultural sector making it more equitable.We want to broadly understand how blockchain technology might better support the redistribution of wealth and power in the art ecosystem.”
Participants in the blockchain feasibility study were: Ruth Catlow (co-founder and artistic director of Furtherfield), Lucy Sollitt (curator The Future of the Art Market report), Penny Rafferty (co-founder blockchain-based micro-economy in the arts platforms, Ishtar Gate and The Black Swan DAO), Frances Liddell (PHD Researcher at University of Manchester), Joe Townsend (Principal Partnerships Manager, creative sectors, UCL Innovation and Enterprise), James Morgan (Known Origin and King’s College London) and the Blockchain Society. This preliminary study lays the foundation for a larger project to implement the blockchain into the management of the Birth Rites Collection.
Artist, Jaygo Bloom, one of the artists whose work founded BRC, will be collaborating with the collection to mint an NFC to highlight the possibility for better wealth distribution. In 2007 Bloom created a series of gifs and animations for the first ever BRC website now archived. In early June, the first of these works will be available for purchase, funds will be split between BRC and the artist and a future resale split will be inbuilt into the smart contract for both parties.
Tours
If you would like to visit the collection online with a guided tour, sign up on eventbrite to be led around via a zoom link with Hermione Wiltshire, Eleanor Featherby or Helen Knowles.
Next dates with Eleanor Featherby: March 19th, April 2nd, 5th 2021
Next dates with Hermione Wiltshire: April 16th, 30th, May 28th, June 12th 2021
Double Bill Film Screening, Summer School
Reproductive Exile by Lucy Beech and Charity by Kate Davis
£6.00 / 4.00 concessions
Lucy Beech's new film Reproductive Exile follows the fictional story of a woman embarking in cross-boarder assisted reproduction. Whilst considering the gender bias in biomedical research the looping film is characterised by the entrapment of a perpetual journey and reveals the protagonists’ dependency on an intricate constellation of invisible female bodies; human and non-human, that work, care, constitute and provide for her reproductive journey. These bodies are invisibly linked by the production and sharing of animal and human sex hormones central to reproductive technologies.
The film is shot in Czech Republic, where the lack of legislation associated with reproductive rights offers a degree of freedom to a diverse range of commissioning parents who are driven to the country by a range of social, political and economic forces, whilst sustaining a booming fertility industry. The story unfolds in a fictional, private, international clinic built in a former public sanatorium where the protagonist is introduced to ‘Eve’ (short for Evatar) a three-dimensional representation of the female reproductive system. Based on research into recent developments in reproductive science, ‘Eve’ is the future of drug testing in women and personalised medicine. Pre-clinical research on women’s health has historically involved mostly male-derived cells and male animals, these practices have resulted in a lack of information about female physiology. Eve addresses this absence of the female body in the history of its own treatment and as the intended parent discovers more about her body’s incapacity to produce the hormones she needs to stimulate her ovaries, she becomes obsessed with Eve, confiding in her about the drugs she injects daily, derived in some cases from pregnant horse urine and in others from concentrated urine of menopausal women.
Charity by Kate Davis was commissioned by LUX and Glasgow Film Festival in 2016. Charity was inspired by the ways in which the work of film-maker, poet and artist Margaret Tait, invites the viewer to contemplate fundamental emotions and everyday activities that are often overlooked. Taking artistic representations of breastfeeding as its focus, the film explores how the essential – but largely invisible and unpaid – processes we employ to care for others could be re-imagined.
Oxytocin: Mothering the World 2019
Birth Rites Collection collaborated with Procreate Project for Oxytocin 2019: Mothering the World.
The one-day symposium and programme of live art and performance uniquely melded works which were staged across Guys Campus at Kings College London with discussion panels and workshops. We delivered a performance programme responding to a curatorial theme questioning iconography, cultural connotations and stereotypes associated with the word ‘Mother/Mothering’ and how they effect LGBTQIA families. We also ran tours of the Collection with our own Helen Knowles and Hermione Wiltshire. These were very well attended.
Performance sites included; The General Medical Classroom, The Guys Chapel (seen above), the ancient medical school corridors surrounded by statues of old alumni and more recent sculptures by Billie Bond from the Birth Rites Collection, the Keats memorial arch and the contemporary New Hunts House.
The Collection’s most recent acquisitions, Giving Birth to Beauty by Himali Singh Soin and Once you care, you’re future by Laura Yuile were both commissioned for Oxytocin 2019 and reject the idea of the binary and the problems this representation poses for non-binary perspectives and those who cannot – or choose not to – reproduce. Performed in the Cloisters of King's College London, Guy's Campus, Himali Singh Soin's performance was outstanding with excellent reviews from passersby, who were so moved as to write in to the artist and congratulate her. Meanwhile, Laura Yuile's durational performance sparked the intrigue and interaction of participants, and their children, who encountered the work as they entered New Hunt's House. These fantastic works are now permanently in the Birth Rites Collection.
What our visitors thought:
“It was great to be at King's College and see the Birth Rites Collection there, the presentation of the Collection was great. The art performances were excellent and they gave a lovely visual, concrete experience of the maternal. I really appreciated the theoretical, experiential and practical approach to the day. Excellent event!”
"I loved the different varieties of talks, very informative and delivered in an amazing way. Although this event was from an art perspective, the links between medical and art were done so wonderfully, and brought up a lot of questions for me in a positive way."
"The tour of the Collection was amazing!"
Launch of the Collection at King's College London
On the 25th January we held an amazing launch night at King’s college, London! This included a screening and announcement of the winner of the Birth Rites Competition for New Work 2018.
Birth Rites Competition for New Works 2018 was also screened as part of the Thursday Lates @ Whitworth Art Gallery on 18th January 2017. The following artists were shortlisted; Amy Dignam, Clarissa Borges, Seema Kohli, Alison O'Neill, W.K. Lyhne, Lauren McLaughlin, Tae Eun Ahn, Paula Chambers, Jon Purnell, Sandra Bouguerch, Jennifer Campbell, Jennifer Bishop, Janice Howard, Wai Pong Lui, Frances Megan Wynne, Sara Niroobakhsh, Clare Charnley, Stefanie Ferraz.
The winner of the Birth Rites Competition for New Works is Lauren McLaughlin whose Neon sculpture A conflict of Interest will become part of the collection.
Relaunch - New works - Performance - Video - Talks - Twerkshops!!!
Come and join in Fannie Sosa's Twerkshops. 12.30 - 3.30 at the Birth Rites Collection. Places are limited to 25, email helen@birthrites.org.uk to book. Priority is given to midiwfery students from Salford University for half the places.
Talks: 4 - 6pm
Susan Bright: curator of the Home Truths Exhibition and author of Photography Now will be in a Q and A session with Helen Knowles to discuss the work of Ana Casas Broda.
Hermione Wiltshire RCA will talk about her project The Birth of the Image.
Evening Reception of New Additions: 6.15 - 8pm
Himali Singh Soin will premiere a new performance work to be presented alongside the eleven new additions to the collection at an evening reception.
Relaunch of the Collection
Ana Casas Broda, Kinderwunsch
In early 2016 we relaunched the Birth Rites Collection following building works at the Mary Seacole Building, in Salford University where the collection is housed.
We have been working on collecting many new additions to the collection which we will be showcasing for the first time during the launch. The central acquisition we will be celebrating, is the donation by Ana Casas Broda. Video works which we have been collecting will also be on view for he first time ever.
To coincide with this major relaunch we will be hosting a series of workshops, performances and profiling new projects which include The Birth of the Image, Project Afterbirth and Procreate. Please get in touch if you wish to be involved in this exciting event.
Curators Talks Theater Gwan, Fishguard & Kings College
On the 19th September 2015 Helen Knowles was asked to travel to Pembrokeshire where she gave a talk to an audience at the Theater Gwan in Fishguard and screen the film Born by Andy Lawrence and Judith Kurutac. This was funded as part of the Holy Hiatus series.
A really lively discussion was held afterwards. To watch this talk please follow this link.
On the 29th September Helen Knowles gave a lecture about the collection and Youtube Portraits and held a series of workshops with midiwfery students at Kings College in London. Students drew from Youtube birth videos and made animated strips of quick drawings.
Youtube Portraits Talk
Helen Knowles recently gave two talks about the Youtube Portraits Series. One was at Cambridge University for the CRASH seminars and the other at Talking Bodies in The University of Chester.
Private View : Public Birth - New artist-print intervention by Helen Knowles
Location: Richard Hoggart Building (RHB), Kingsway Corridor, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Opening times : 26th April – 23rd May 2013, 9am - 9pm Monday - Saturday
This exhibition is supported by the Women’s Art Library, located in the Library’s Special Collections at Goldsmiths, Arts Council England, The Amateurs Trust and The Eaton Fund for Artists and Gentlewomen.
This is the penultimate exhibition of the Youtube Portraits series. In September, Helen Knowles will be exhibiting the entire series in an exhibition entitled, Private View : Public Birth at GV Art Gallery in London. Look out for further news of this exhibition, the accompanying catalogue, events and panel discussion.