The Women's Library
celebrating and recording women's lives

London Metropolitan University

Jo Holland: Combined Unity

Two works from Jo Holland's Combined Unity were on display in The Women's Library foyer from 16 January 2008 to 29 March 2008.

Combined Unity is Holland's series of twelve unique large-scale ilfrachrome prints, over the course of which she dissects the human placenta.

Belonging neither to the mother’s nor to the child’s body, the placenta has one function, which is the creation of the human being - after which it is discarded, like the used mould of a cast sculpture.

Retrieving this and other discarded objects (wilted flowers, rotten pears, pig’s eyes, lamb’s hearts), and capturing the life that has so recently left them, Holland’s work reveals a beauty hidden in the residue of the creative process. Cutting through surface appearances, these images reveal a hidden, fleeting and often violent beauty where we least expect to find it.

 

Combined Unity 6, Jo Holland
Jo Holland, Combined Unity, no. 6 (2006)
mounted ilfochrome
40 x 62 inches