12 years into motherhood I started the menopause. Mother and daughter at the menstrual antithesis.

After some particularly hormonal explosions, Iris looks to me with a sharp glint and says, ‘We will both be lucky to get out of this alive’.

Rites of Passage explores ideas relating to feminine subjectivity and cunt imagery. It conflates two life stages; the beginning and end of menstruation. As a fresh young woman there was a sense of ‘moving up in the world’ from lacy - dingy white, once long ago - knee-high socks to tights – ‘natural all over American tan. A passing down of a mantle. I was physically and psychologically confined from waist to toe in the nylon encasing, which felt as smooth as sand on my pale, unmarked leg flesh.