Art can be a fantastic medium to make a serious and taboo topic more approachable, and this exhibition, which grew out of research by the Open University, engages with the abortion debate on a very personal level. A third of women will have an abortion at some point in their lives, and yet it's a topic that's often kept quiet by those who've experienced it. My Body My Life bypasses the politics, the stigma and the international debates, to focus on the heart of the issue - the reasons why individual women have abortions, and how they feel about it.
The stereotype might be a young, unmarried woman, pregnant through carelessness, but of course reality is not that simple. More than 50% of the women in England and Wales who have abortions are already mothers, and that statistic alone will challenge many people's assumptions.
The stories, from men as well as women, are told through the medium of clothing, beautifully curated by The Liminal Space. Reminiscent of What Were You Wearing, a powerful American exhibition about clothing and rape, here the clothing seems to be asking "Would you emblazon the fact of abortion on a Tshirt?". It might be a common occurrence, more common than most of us realise, but it's doubtful whether most people are ready for that sort of openness. Perhaps this exhibition will do something to change that.
