Birth, 2008
Screen-printed wallpaper
52 x 1000 cm

In 2006 Helen Knowles collaborated with designer Francesca Granato to create Birth Rites' signature pattern Birth. The motifs chosen for the pattern were taken from lap dancers' calling cards; the aim was to challenge the perceived separation between women as mothers and women as sexual entities. As the figures are arranged in labouring and birthing postures the pattern also exposes the taboo which attempts to conceal the undeniable link between sex and birth. The design was always intended to be used on wallpaper, a 'feminine' medium, thereby further mixing the domestic with the erotic.

Conception, 2008
Screen-printed Wallpaper
52 x 1000 cm

Helen Knowles developed the pattern entitled Conception into a wallpaper for the exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery ‘Walls Are Talking’ in 2010. Helen worked alongside Sharon Whitehurst to develop a hand silkscreen printed paper.  ‘Conception’ employs scientific illustrations of the male and female reproductive organs. From a distance the paper appears pretty and innocuous, reminiscent of Art Nouveau designs, but on closer inspection it is an up - front exploration of sexuality and gender. The diagrams of the reproductive organs repetitively and perfectly combine in a synergy that echoes coitus in gentle fleshy pink shades. The wallpaper in this context makes associations between domesticity and sex in a harmonious and celebratory fashion.