Exhibition | 'A Bloody Good Thing' with Women From The Inside Collective

A Bloody Good Thing’ is a body of photography and video work created in Limerick by the female collective ‘Women from the Inside’ that explores menstruation and the diverse  number of changes that can happen to a woman’s body throughout her lifetime. This exhibition challenges the way menstruation may be perceived, as there are still negative connotations attached to it in society. They wanted menstruation to be seen as a celebration, a chance to release negative energies and the beginning of a new phase of regrowth and rebirth.

Menstruation is such an incredibly dynamic and natural process.

For this body of work, they collaborated and captured twelve real and unedited  women’s  bodies, from teenagers to women in their 80s, of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds and ethnicities. Different fruits such as grapefruit, pomegranate, plum and cherries, were used to   represent the different stages of menstruation throughout a woman’s lifetime.

They were also inspired by the text “50 Things You Need to Know  About Periods: Know  your flow and live in sync with your cycle” by Claire Baker. She likens each stage of a woman’s cycle to the seasons, and we used this ideology to collaborate and shoot a  contemporary dancer.

Women from the Inside is a collaborative photographic project by Clara Planelles (Creative

Director and Photographer), Clara McSweeney (Project Coordinator and Graphic Designer) and Maria McSweeney (Public Relations, Social Media Manager, and Visual Artist) which  explores what it means to be a woman living in the 21st century in Limerick City.

The collective's work has been shown at, The People Musuem Limerick, The Belltable Limerick, The Library Project in Dublin, Cavan Arts Festival, Hunt Musuem Limerick, TsunDoku Art Book Fair at the Photo Ireland Festival, Limerick Women Prison, The Crescent Shopping Centre Limerick, Kfest Arts Festival Killorglin and Limerick Summer Festival.