‘Period Rorschach’
This is a series celebrating the menstrual cycle. All pieces were made using my menstrual blood as a medium. Pressing, spilling, smudging the blood, and then using pen and colour to unpick and embed the images that were seen in the shapes, consistency, movement and shade formed by the spontaneous spilling of menstrual blood. ‘Period Rorschach’ hopes to open a playful discussion through subverting the very materiality of Menstruation and playing with it as you would ink - with its viscosity and texture. Over the years my curiosity and learning about different perspectives and experiences around Menstruation has grown and evolved into this project. Through the process of making ‘Period Rorschach’ it allowed me to confront organically and deeply issues of contraception, gender perception, inherited trauma and the point of art.
Please email for print enquiries victoriawatsonjane@gmail.com
Scroll down for images including piece titles & poems;
‘Croc-flict’ A4 Menstrual blood, acrylics & pen
We all spill sometimes
We spill
Obsessed with growth
We have spilt blood to civilise
We have spilt
And turn to point and blame
We avoid the fire, the heat that lies inside.
Grasping out
placing our fear onto the other
Not facing the other inside of ourselves.
The crocodile,
The prehistory knows; there was never one or the other.
But we are life that sits, and creates meaning of the in between. Our greatest powers becomes taboo, All is upside down.
Croc-smile and rage for the ages within you-
We could all do with a good spill.
‘Chicken & Egg’ A4 Menstrual blood, acrylics & pen.
‘Mining Moons’ Menstrual blood, gold acrylic and ink. A3
The Reaching Promise of a Womanhood I Was Taught to Expect. Walking from night to sunrise with a gun in my hand watching as ancestral rumours catch up with me.
‘Fishing on a Fish. Flying Fish’ A4 Canvas board, menstrual blood, acrylics & pen.
‘Lady in the Sea’ A4 Menstrual blood, gold acrylics & pen.
Let us celebrate that red flow that stops, that’s too heavy, too light, that we miss, that we want rid, that stains, that we shift with pills and implants. Here’s to the “curse” to the makings of us and to the women inside, outside and a part of all of us. May the cell walls break and crumble our vision of division. Let the lady emerge from the Sea.
‘SP’IL MONSTRO’ A3 Canvas Board & menstrual blood
Clumsy footing on your period? Beware Sharks and bears will smell you from far away and be attracted to you. Pray, Eat us up before we can get our hands on the pickling vegetables and turn them sour. Period myths. What a lark. Pickles and periods
‘Open Wide’ A3 Paper, Menstrual blood, watercolours, gold acrylic & pen
From death comes life
Shoots.
We suckle from flow till
The gold reaper
Gives us the thumbs up.
Water turns red
And this is the most unholy
Of waters
They have said.
But these rivers make
Shoots.
Bridges to the palms
That can never hold,
The dam bursts
The restless
Civil unrest-
Here & trying to be together
‘Bloodhound’ A3 Menstrual blood, pen & gold acrylic.
Woofing away at something that it can hear,
Barking mad,
its not even full moon.
‘Remnants’ A3 Menstrual blood.
Pressed sheet spills
A morning red hue dew.
The rectangle I lie on to become unconscious is now stained- dot to dot.
‘Arabesque’ A3 Canvas Board, menstrual blood & gold acrylic.
‘Rocketman and the Half Moon’ A3 Menstrual blood, pen & acrylics.