Dustin Yellin

Dustin Yellin, American artist.

Images from the 'Dust in the basement' exhibition

Painting on multiple layers of perspex to for three dimensional images

 

Nina Saunders

Nina Saunders. UK artist.

 

http://www.ninasaunders.eu/ninasaunders-cur.html

 

She uses recognisable second-hand furniture, and deforms them so that they are dysfunctional, stripped of comfort, melting, harbouring tumours.

The work is all the more disturbing as the furniture is iconic, recognisable; it could be a chair that has been in your family for generations.

Where is the owner of this chair? Is it mirroring their condition?

 

 

Any day now

Muriel Gallan: Positive images of old age

Muriel Gallan, Photo journalist

 

http://www.murielgallan.co.uk/#/commissions/4572190500

 

Commision for Swansea Singleton Hospital care of the eldely ward. Photos of older people enjoying an active life. To highlight that aging and medical conditions do not have to stop patients enjoying activities that they enjoy.

 

Elderly care consultant Wyn Harris, who thought up the idea, said: "It is recognised there is an important crossover between the arts and medicine which is mutually beneficial.

"With regards to the pictures on elderly care wards, I think they are important for a number of reasons. They enliven and add interest to the ward environment.

''However, more import- antly, they remind patients, staff and visitors that being elderly is not just about illness and frailty — many elderly people have active and rewarding lives.

"It also helps us to see inpatients' illness episodes in the context of their life outside hospital."

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/Student-Muriel-Gallan-brightens-elderly-care-ward/story-18502262-detail/story.html#ixzz2PlleLZ3O

Judy Somerville: Another generation

Judy Somerville. American artist.

http://www.gallerydir.com/art-web/ARTIST/data/ID/17

 

 

 

"As generation after generation of the elderly remain "unseen"and youngness becomes the mode; I say let's change this image . Let's forget the calendar girls and bring on the elderly as images of old people suddenly appear over every mantle place in America. Visions of old people are the autobiography to be of every person on earth. The elderly are a beautiful part of the natural world, after all what is beauty? Like rivers flowing through the forest each wrinkle defines The infinite quality of life's textures and experiences. An idealistic monumental vision mysteriously transforms reality in surprising ways. In these portraits I hope to portray another kind of beauty,sensuality and a nouveau eroticism. This is truely a new generation,the elderly through my eyes."

 

Jake Lever

The blue, the dim and the gold

 

 

 

I first saw this piece at Medicine Unboxed 2012. It is a beautiful representation of the journey that Jake made with his dad who had a terminal illness.

 

"I approach my practice as a contemplative activity. My images are often derived from fragments of medieval paintings, frescoes and icons. Recently the hand has provided a focus for my work, a framework for the exploration of frailty, vulnerability and the presence of the divine"
 

 

 

 

 

JAKE LEVER believes that the arts can be an aid to recovery and the ongoing wellbeing of a person. He will be debuting his huge and stunning piece, the Blue and the Dim and the Gold. As tiny, fragile vessels, adrift in a half-light world, Jake helps us navigate the ‘dark night of the soul’, buoyed by the belief that there is a shimmering beauty to be discovered in the darkness

Joanna Walsh Hospice drawings 2011

       

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/ars-moriendi/timelapse-video.aspx

Joanna Walsh’s ‘Ars Moriendi: the art of dying’ was an artwork created in the foyer space of Wellcome Collection, exploring our relationship with death through personal and quietly affecting drawings.

 

 

"It all started when the woman living next door to me, who is in her 90s, became bedridden. She is cared for at home by her widowed son. Her bedroom shares a wall with mine and I can hear her: sometimes she watches the telly, sometimes she talks to herself, sometimes she is in pain. She is having what most people consider to be a 'good' death: in her own home surrounded by her family, something not everyone is lucky enough to experience."

 

 

"I investigated art from Wellcome Library, including Ars Moriendi, the medieval instruction manual for a 'good' death in the Christian tradition, but also portrayals of death from other cultures and other eras: vanitas art designed to remind the living owner of the precarious nature of mortality, and grave goods from ancient civilisations made to ensure a smooth transition for the soul from its before- to after-death existence."

 

"I was surprised and impressed by the beauty and delicacy of the objects I found associated with such a dark and difficult subject. I wanted to make something that responded to these qualities."

"I chose to work at Sobell House Hospice because, although it cares for patients who need more medical attention than would be possible in their own homes, it allows patients, their families and friends to create their own environments, altering them as much or as little as they desire and circumstances allow."

 

"At the hospice I became interested in the personal objects patients find important to have with them, and how some seem familiar from the images I found at Wellcome - flowers, pictures, clocks - while others remain entirely personal."

 

"As in the original Ars Moriendi, residents are also encouraged (if they like) to prepare for death by creating something themselves: through music, art, writing or religious contemplation. In a culture where death is taboo and art about dying is scarce or considered morbid, there are few modern visual traditions surrounding 'a good death'.

 

 

"My final work, a large drawing on glass, reflects what I saw at Sobell.I used white on black. Both are traditionally associated with death in many cultures. Wanting to bring dying into the light, I decided to draw in public. And I chose to situate the work opposite the Wellcome Collection's cafe and bookshop so that it could serve the same meditative function as vanitas and Ars Moriendi art."

Hugh Turvey

Hugh Turvey

Trained as a designer / art director but on discovering photography he retrained under iconic photographer Gered Mankowitz. During 1996/1997 he started experimenting with x-ray/shadow photography after being asked to create an alternative ‘revealing’ image for an album cover. With the encouragement of the Science Photo Library he went on to produce an extensive series of coloured x-rays of everyday objects, which were first published on the 4 April 1999 in The Observer Magazine, LIFE, UK. In the same year Credit Suisse discovered Hughs x-ray vision and commissioned 6 ground breaking ‘motion x-ray’ European TV commercials

"The hands on approach and the manipulation of technique: overexposure, multiple exposure, chemical processing, filtering, rigs, mechanics, physics, happy accidents, trial and error and hand colouring.

I do not work exclusively with one set of x-ray equipment rather I tailor the equipment to requirement: for example to capture a small insect of low density is very different to that of capturing the high densities of a sports motorbike.

There is a technique to produce a photographic image without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. These are called photograms (or as Man Ray called the "rayographs" ) and is one of the first photographic imaging techniques ever used by William Fox Talbot (and he called them “photogenic drawings”).

Simply put, the only difference between my x-ray images and the photograms produced by the early photographic pioneers is the frequency of the ‘light’ used to expose the ‘paper’. I have created (unlike the 'Roentgenogram' which is pertaining to the originators name) a more generic term ' XOGRAM ' to define my x-ray images within the context of my photographic background and the cross over of my visible light and x-ray images.  

I have also created the term ' XOGRAFIA ' to define the act of producing xograms"

 

 

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Fragile Narratives, 2011

As a doctor, I am interested in the important, but often overlooked, interface between art and medicine, as this provides a unique insight into the human condition.  I wanted to celebrate people’s narratives and histories, and experiment with different methods of recording and documenting these narratives. It is also interesting to see how some narratives become distorted by a disease process. I wanted to highlight how these narratives impact upon the next generation.

 

I did not want my work to be morbid, but instead something beautiful, celebrating life.

 

In our society, death and dying are seen as the last taboo. As a culture, our attitudes towards the elderly and the dying are not as positive as those held by other cultures. This is reflected in the recent political reports indicating that care in the fields of old age and palliative medicine needs to be done better. I have often witnessed people being defined solely by their disease, dehumanising them.

 

I decided to use fabric in this piece because of the narrative connotations associated with it... ‘spinning a yarn’/ ‘picking up a thread’/‘to fabricate’, etc. Also fabric has a certain delicacy and vulnerability that I wanted to take advantage of for this piece. 

 

 

 Fabric also has very personal and intimate associations with people throughout a lifetime, for example, fabric is the first thing we come into contact with when we are born, surrounds us throughout life in the form of clothing and bedding, and is the last thing to touch our skin in death.

 

I was really pleased with the transparency of the net curtains used to work on. I felt this represented the vulnerability of these people and how this group of people can be forgotten by society, hidden in their homes and looking out through their net curtains.

 

Artist Statement for Medicine Unboxed 2012

I am interested in the concept of ‘the origin of belief’. How are beliefs formed? Are our beliefs individual to us, or influenced by social and cultural factors surrounding us?

 

 

I read that “belief is a mental architecture of how we interpret the world”.

This made me think of formal structures, the organisation of cells that make up the intricate civilisation of tissues which house our thoughts. Although the brain of the doctor would look identical to that of the patient under the microscope, what is it that causes us to adopt different belief systems and thought processes? We all share the same neuroanatomy, but no two minds are identical.

 

Historical references have been documented concerning the discoveries that neuroscientists have made, connecting the hard-wired organisational structure of the brain with the intangible beliefs that we humans hold. For hundreds of years, there have been documented cases of people who have physically damaged their brain through illness or trauma, which has resulted altered behaviour, and possessing very specific delusions, beliefs held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. This anecdotal evidence is now being confirmed with the development of science and technology. A method of taking pictures of the human brain working, known as functional neuroimaging, shows us the brain lighting up like a Christmas tree when the subject is experiencing different emotions, allowing us to actually see wherein the brain these intangible thoughts originate from within this organ.

“Beliefs are mental objects, in the sense that they are embedded in the brain”.

I wanted to work with this idea of functional imaging, representing the origins of belief. I based the images on real MRI scans that I am used to seeing everyday in a professional capacity, using images of the brain where it had been ‘cut’ into interesting sections which are not easily recognisable. The hard, cold, science of anatomy and pathology, have been contrasted with ancient techniques and muted colours to produce the ethereal quality of the images of the mind in action. The canvases are layered with gesso to incorporate texture. The palette is calm and neutral, reminding me of the transient nature of dust; how our delicate and fragile beliefs could fade with time.