Helen Sargeant, Birth: Party Surpise, Ink and Pencil on Paper, Series of 8 drawings 25cm x 25cm, 2013
Birth: Party Surprise (2013) are a series of pencil and ink drawings that use public images of You Tube birth videos together with my personal experiences of giving birth. These drawings aim to expose both the physical and emotional experience of birth, paying attention to feelings of emotional detachment during the delivery of my sons and the idea of traumatic birth more generally.
Within these drawings I consider the vulnerability of mother and child. The safety and cocooned interior of the womb, the literal expulsion of the baby through the vagina, the cutting of the umbilical cord and the separation of babies body from mothers body.
We see the female body leaking blood and mounds of breasts becoming fountains of milk. The mother is represented as a schematic vessel, a place of holding. Sharp lines describe vulval flesh, nipples, areola and bubbles of ink suggest cells, eggs, embryos and wombs.
