Celebration: The Beginning of Labour (1984)

Mural at The National Maternity Hospital, Dublin

Celebration: The Beginning of Labour was a large-scale site specific mural 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. After finishing 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 way to announce the finished mural and 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.

In the painting, two Grecian style women are running holding aloft a pregnant woman who is about to give birth. Women on horseback celebrate in the background. I chose to work in different styles while making the original painting that the mural was based on. Painting styles from cave painting, Greek and Minoan inspired images to expressionistic. In this way, I wanted to say that giving birth was universal and never ending and to counteract all the many images that depicted war and to celebrate giving birth and the giving of life instead.

Soon after its completion the hospital authorities chose to whitewash the image. This was supposedly due to the presentation of the figures as being nude and within nature in a celebration of birth, which was deemed “not suitable” to the board of the hospital, despite the approval of the image during initial agreements.The removal of the mural was steeped in controversy and gained national coverage.

You can read an article by Catherine Marshall in The Irish Times about the work here. The work is featured in, Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks, edited by Fintan O’Toole, Catherine Marshall and Eibhear Walshe and in Irish Art 1920 – 2020 Catherine Marshall and Yvonne Scott, editors, Royal Irish Academy.

1984 mural for The national Maternity Hospital, Dublin, as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. — 1984 mural for The National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art.

Press coverage and image of the mural in situ.

RTÉ coverage of Celebration: The Beginning of Labour in 1984

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.

http://www.reimaginingbirth.com/

Listen to the Podcast of Pauline’s presentation