Time Measured

King George V Memorial Hospital for Mothers and Babies Birth Centre

 The work is a response to the experience of having a child, learning how to breastfeed and realising how unprepared I had been for what breastfeeding involved and how I would feel about it.

It was an introduction to an entirely foreign world that had its own immutable rules and restrictions.

It was a long-term commitment that demanded discipline, vigilance and sacrifice to shifting routines. I came to appreciate the preciousness of time to myself as I began to work through the full 24-hour day.

I needed to create work to express and displace what was happening to me rather than just living it day to day.

As the work developed, particular insights emerged: the organisation of time as a governing force; the discovery that we are, to an extent, cut off from a history of women’s experience; and that the changing perception of oneself following childbirth and during breastfeeding is not readily understood by others.

Pamela Bell - Article