As a visual artist, Ruth Bircham continues to uphold her unwavering principle that the naked body should be free from societal taboos. She believes sexuality is natural and advocates for a humanistic understanding of it. Through her artistic creations, she explores how society views particular parts of the body, along with the associated thoughts and feelings.
Fig 1. © Ruth Bircham
Fig 2. © Ruth Bircham
Fig 3. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: When did you realize your artistic calling?
Ruth Bircham: I felt I saw colours and forms differently at 2 years old, while seated up in a tree with my uncle eating slices of cucumber in salted water, in Jamaica. My uncle had told me to look up at the blue sky and see the colours of the greenery down below, how the two different shades complement one another. I would perceive colors differently, not as fleeting, insignificant details, but as an artist sees their spectrum. The big red beef tomato slices contrast against the sliced cucumbers on a plate, which stood out strong like the sky and the greenery. Growing older, my attempts to depict blue hues and greens within landscapes failed, for England’s sky and foliage differ in shade from tropical Jamaica’s.
Fig 4. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: Can you tell me about the struggles and challenging circumstances that fostered your resilience?
Ruth Bircham: My art is my healer. When I was studying for my BA Hon degree course in Fine Art Combined Media, there was one particular subject in the course that brought me to really question my identity. The course was an identity. I learnt that everything that was experienced in my life, negative and positive, and emotions, shaped who I am today, what makes me, who I am, what creates my identity. I saw a counselor for therapy because this identity brought back all the negative feelings associated with my childhood sexual abuse, and I could not handle it by myself. The result was for me to use my art as the key benefit to treat me, myself and I, to embrace me, to be stronger for myself and my inner child. I created artwork showing a woman’s face alongside her inner child.
Fig 5. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: Where did you study?
Ruth Bircham: My mum opposed my becoming an artist, so formal art study was not part of my schooling. She wanted me to be a nurse. But when we moved to London, I was 15 years old. My mum pulled me out of school in Doncaster to go to Jamaica to live there. But I became ill because I wasn’t eating the freshly killed animals and was living on only fruits and vegetables. I began my art studies at Brixton College when I was sixteen. However, the lack of seriousness among students and the tutor prompted my departure. And after I had my baby. I tried Morley college but again the tutors weren’t serious, so instead I studied a National Diploma in Art and Design at Camberwell College of Art. College entry required designing an item for transporting a single fresh egg. My baby had severe asthma, and doctors admitted her to the ICU multiple times. So I had struggled in this course, but could bring my baby with me to my classes; she enjoyed the attention. Then I studied a short course in life drawing in South Norwood. Then I studied Access to Art and Design at Croydon College, and the college awarded me a scholarship to Higher Education to study my BA Hon degree course in Fine Art Combined Media. After graduation, I studied scriptwriting with my daughter Ruby at Elephant and Castle college which was a certificate short course. Then I studied magnetic marketing, which was paid for by my sponsor.
Fig 6. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: What visual artists or art movements do you find inspiring?
Ruth Bircham: I find the Fluxus art movement, with Yoko Ono's artworks, so inspiring to watch water dry on pieces of paper and the performance event score called “Cut Piece”. Also, the artworks of Claude Monet, Renoir and Édouard Manet, their palette of colours is very rich. In their artistic works, they apply colour to generate depth within shadows and use identical colors in their highlights. I also love the Pre-Raphaelites; their realistic approach to painting real life with imagination thrown in is captivating. I also like Tracey Emin's approach of including her life within her artworks, of things that happened to her. Also, Sonia Boyce, I love feminist artist artworks that make sense and lead me to question their realities and my own realities. I am also interested in Dali, and outside art, Renaissance, basically all the schools and movements that inspire me and my own creations in art.
Shunga Gallery: Could you elaborate on the driving forces behind your decision to produce artwork that explores eroticism?
Ruth Bircham: The driving forces behind my decision to create erotic artworks are the reactions from the viewers. Their gaze, their feelings, and how erotica makes them feel, questions they would like to communicate across to the lived-in environment, as I feel their voices are silenced. Therefore, my type of erotica exists. It empowers the closeted and silenced by giving them a voice.
Fig 7. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: What’s your view on pornography?
Ruth Bircham: My views on pornography are that it depicts and degrades the nude body negatively whilst it’s in the throes of passion. Which can be extreme. People often treat and view bodies of flesh negatively in ways that express extreme wretchedness. This fails to positively celebrate the body’s aesthetics and instead alienates the female body, reducing it to a tool or object.
Shunga Gallery: Can you name images and books that have profoundly and permanently influenced you?
Ruth Bircham: I’m a bookworm. The images that influenced me include Tracey Emin’s “I’ve Got It All” (2000), Mary Duffy’s “Cutting the Ties That Bind”, Jo Spence’s “Exiled” (from the series “Narratives of dis-ease”), and “The Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN” (1990-93). Authors who influenced me are Rosemary Betterton, Julia Kristeva, Lynda Nead, Lucy Lippard, David Lomas, Parveen Adams, and Griselda Pollock.
Fig 8 . © Ruth Bircham
Fig 9. © Ruth Bircham
Fig 10. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: What was the nature of your professional interactions with Nigerian artists Adetayo Shoyemi and Ayoola Odupitan, and what significant lessons did you learn from these exchanges?
Ruth Bircham: I interacted with these two Nigerian artists to organise and have an art exhibition in their country Nigeria to bridge the gap of diversity and culture, from this experience, I learned about their way of life, their foods, what is acceptable and not acceptable within their culture and their garments. The Adetayo stated I needed to wear their garments to conform with their safety practices. We went to many businesses to ask for sponsorship to pay the gallery fees for us. Younger people in Nigeria had to bend a knee to their elders to greet them when they entered their homes and workplaces. They were very kind to me and welcoming. We worked really well as a team to bring the exhibition to happen at the Terrakulture gallery in Victoria Island in Lagos. The artwork was used to settle the remaining balance. The newspapers Punch, The Guardian, and This Day held a press conference with us.
Shunga Gallery: Can you share how you first encountered the independent scholar Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju and explain his beliefs and philosophy on sexuality in relation to your own?
Ruth Bircham: Our first encounter was on Facebook, then in person at my home. Vincent found my artworks enlightening, bold, unique, and authentic. He admired my projection of the glory of the female body and believed that we should always celebrate the female body.
Fig 11. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju with Ruth Bircham Painting © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: What strategies do you use when dealing with criticism?
I try to answer as best as I can to people who query my erotic artworks with positive feedback and replies. However, certain questions might prove too personal, causing confusion. Such as, “Are you sex mad?” I understand people confront erotica in their own way; some may feel intimidated, some may question its existence, and some may avoid and block me entirely. Which is what had happened on Facebook. But in Jade magazine and the Guild of Erotic Artists, Cork Street gallery's “Erotica Exhibition” and Darly Champion, who was the author of The Paradoxical Kingdom and the magazine “Something Dark,” questioned its existence academically. While they welcomed my erotic paintings, most cultures found them intimidating and wanted me to cover them up with something unreal, such as abstraction. I want to reveal and transform the reality of what the naked body can truly accomplish.
Fig 12. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: Do you have a preferred country for exhibiting art?
Ruth Bircham: I want every country on Earth to see my erotic paintings, so they can understand, value, and learn from them. As this is the truth of the human body in all its beauty, size, shape, and shades, colour and form. Free from the media’s inaccurate depictions of ideal bodies. Our body parts are unique and exist in multitude in many diversities; we are each an individual. Our bodies are different.
Fig 13. © Ruth Bircham
Fig 14. © Ruth Bircham
Fig 15. © Ruth Bircham
Shunga Gallery: Which projects do you intend to work on soon?
Ruth Bircham: I’m currently working on a commission for the Pashmin Gallery, which is a hypothetical piece based on the destruction of the Earth because of all the wars. My next project after this painting will be a Shakespeare collection suitable for children. I’m painting a series of erotic artworks that push boundaries with their portrayal of objects used for personal gratification. My brave models are wonderful, and they happily send me photos and videos of themselves in various poses. Meeting Andreas Turnsek, a freelance television journalist from Germany, is also something I am eager to do. I’m looking forward to working with him to brainstorm visual art concepts for an exhibition. My goal is also to collaborate with Holger Strohm, who wants to display his vintage erotic fashion at an exhibition in Hamburg, Germany. I hope to make this happen for him, and I’m also hoping for collaboration from other artists specializing in erotic artwork.
Fig 16. Ruth next to her painting © Ruth Bircham
Ruth Bircham has the following website
Click HERE for the author's earlier article on Bircham or here for an interview with the Italian shock surrealist Saturno Buttò
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