Caroline Walker: Birth Reflections (2022)
Caroline Walker, a painter known for depicting women's everyday lives, completed a residency at UCLH's Elizabeth Garrett Anderson maternity wing in 2022. Her work, inspired by her own pregnancy, includes large canvases and sketches portraying midwives, doctors, and mothers.
Caroline Walker (b.1982, Dunfermline) studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, and is known for her accomplished paintings, which offer a lens into women's everyday lives. In 2022, UCLH Arts & Heritage hosted a residency for the artist at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson maternity wing at University College Hospital (UCLH).
Through her large canvases, intimate panels, and ink sketches, she portrays diverse female subjects in settings that blur the boundaries between public and private. Her works reveal the complex social, cultural, and economic experiences of women in contemporary society.
The paintings created during the residency capture midwives, doctors, cleaners, and mothers at UCLH NHS Foundation Trust. It is inspired by a series of four paintings by Frederick Cayley Robinson, ‘The Acts of Mercy’, which originally hung in the foyer of the Middlesex Hospital, of which The Fitzrovia Chapel is now the only remaining building. After the Middlesex Hospital was closed in 2005 and shortly after demolished, the paintings were acquired by the Wellcome Collection nearby.
When I first started speaking to UCLH about a residency, several departments interested me as potential subject matter. It wasn’t until I found out I was pregnant and began attending appointments at the hospital as an expectant mother that I began to develop a particular interest in the areas I was visiting.
Trips to the maternity wing for scans, blood tests, antenatal classes and then the birth itself were both new experiences emotionally for me visually. At some point during this period, I decided that the maternity wing would make the ideal subject for my work, bringing together my relationship with this hospital with an ongoing interest in depicting women’s working lives through painting.
Caroline Walker exhibited the three paintings from the residency, Theatre, Ultrasound, and Birthing Pool within the Fitzrovia Chapel. A catalogue from the exhibition can be found here. Alongside the exhibition, UCLH Arts & Heritage acquired the oil sketches of the large paintings from Caroline’s residency at the hospital. These were displayed in The Street Gallery in April 2022 and are now on display in the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson building.
Find out more about Caroline Walker's residency in the UCLH Arts and Heritage Culture Clinic podcast episode.
About UCLH Arts & Heritage
UCLH Arts & Heritage is the hospital arts and heritage project that serves UCLH NHS Foundation Trust and its surrounding community and is funded entirely by charitable donations and fundraising. UCLH Arts & Heritage is committed to providing a welcoming, uplifting environment for all patients, visitors and staff through the use of a varied and stimulating arts and heritage programme. Its work aims to improve the patient experience, boost staff morale, increase engagement with the arts and celebrate the Trust’s unique heritage and community.
Since 2005, UCLH has worked to improve patient and staff outcomes through the Arts. It does this in a number of ways, including a changing exhibition and music programme, creative workshops on wards, artist residencies, commissioning site-specific artwork, and a staff culture club. UCLH arts and heritage receives its funding from UCLH Charity and the Friends of UCLH.
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