Mural at The National Maternity Hospital, Dublin
Celebration: The Beginning of Labour (1984) was a mural for The National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. You can read an article by Catherine Marshall in The Irish Times about the work here.
The work is featured in the book Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks, edited by Fintan O’Toole, Catherine Marshall and Eibhear Walshe.
Celebration: The Beginning of Labour, was an image I painted at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles St. Dublin, in 1984. It was part of the IELA, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, which that year had an emphasis on outdoor work. I selected the National Maternity Hospital because pregnancy and birth were themes of my life and my work at that time. As well as painting this very large mural in the courtyard of the hospital, I chose to weave pink and blue ribbons through the railings that surrounded the building, as a further celebration. Many people stopped to inquire what I was doing and many wanted to take part by adding a commemorative ribbon themselves. Soon after its completion the hospital authorities chose to whitewash the image.
Press coverage and image of the mural in situ.
The work was also presented in a International Research Symposium on childbirth, the details of which are below.
International Research Symposium
Humanities Institute
University College Dublin, Ireland
2nd & 3rd July 2013
How has childbirth been portrayed/represented/imagined in the worlds of art and medicine?
What do these images tell us about our cultural relationship with birth?
This interdisciplinary research symposium provided an opportunity for contemporary critical debates into the visual culture of childbirth. This was a unique opportunity for researchers and practitioners to explore/discuss the visual and sensorial culture of birth, and to contribute to our reimagining of this fundamental personal life experience for mother and child.
Central to the vision of ongoing this project is the ambition to build connections between interested parties, providing a forum for transcending current knowledge silos and contributing to innovative change in this important personal/cultural domain of human experience.