Youtube Series
Youtube Series is a set of seven large-scale screen-prints, each one a portrait of a woman in the act of childbirth. The portraits are stills taken from video footage found by the artist on Youtube, part of a vast library of homebirth films posted online by the women whose birth experiences are recorded.
The works featured in Youtube Series appropriate and re-present these women’s filmed experiences and connect to a wider international concern with social media as a tool to democratise what can often be tightly controlled and censored experiences.
Each print is created by exposing the screen with a digital projector, bestowing a pixelated quality to the image which directly references the digital origin of the source material. The virtual Youtube footage is now transferred into a physical object though the medium of print.
The entire YouTube print series was shown in an exhibition called Private View : Public Birth between the 16th - 22nd September 2013 at GV Art Gallery in London. During 2012 and 2013 works were exhibited at the Dean Clough Gallery, Galerie Deadfly, Berlin, Manchester Contemporary, Neo Art Prize and Goldsmiths University as part of the Women’s Art Library programme. Helen Knowles was awarded the Great Art prize in 2012 for two works from YouTube Portraits. Currently the works are being placed in collections, these include Museum of Motherhood, NY and Birth Rites Collection.
Digital Romantics Exhibition Dean Clough Gallery 2012.
Alleingeburt & ‘??????? ? ???????’ Birth with Orgasm II
‘A szülés természete’ The natural way of birth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH0sRTYd17I
Four-colour screen-print on Fabriano paper 101 x 148 cm Edition of 5,
2012
Alleingeburt / Unassisted Childbirth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ANtPxI3pE?
Four-colour screen-print on Fabriano paper, 101cm x 135cm
Edition of 4,
?2012.
Shiloh’s Quick and Peaceful Water Birth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TL6GsSb3-4?
Four-colour screen-print on fabriano paper, 97cm x 149 cm
Edition of 5, ?2012.
Homebirth of Finn No Music Waterbirth, Homebirth, Caul, Midwife…….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZYvg6AYdc?
Four-Colour Screen-Print on Fabriano paper, 101cm x 137cm ?
Edition of 2, 2012.
Birth with Orgasm I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDyUbZW29ts?
Four-colour screen-print on fabriano paper, 101cm x 147cm
Edition of 2 with 4 a/p,?2012.
’ Birth with Orgasm II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDyUbZW29ts
Four-Colour Screen-Print on Fabriano paper, 95.5.cm x 146cm
Edition of 5,?2012.