Gemma Anderson

[Words by Gemma Anderson, http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/guest-post-portraits-patients-and-psychiatrists/]

Portraits; Patients and Psychiatrists began in 2007 when the forensic psychiatrist Dr Tim McInerny saw my etchings at the Royal College of Art’s Great Exhibition. I had made a series of portraits referring to pseudo-scientific theories: comparative physiognomy, phrenology and the Doctrine of Signatures.

I was especially interested in working on portraits of psychiatric patients. My grandmother had spent a period in a psychiatric hospital in 2004. Deeply aware of how her identity was diminished by the language of medicine. I witnessed how medical vocabulary failed to express the history and story of the individual I loved and knew so well.

Tim and I decided to work together on a project creating psychiatric portraits for the 2008 arts exhibition An Experiment in Collaboration, held at Jerwood Space in London. The positive response to this encouraged us to apply for a Wellcome Trust Arts Award so we could develop the concept further.

The project began in earnest in August 2009. Before we started, Tim recruited willing psychiatrists who could identify patients enthusiastic to take part; doctor and patient needed to have a significant working relationship. Although we were based at Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham, I also made drawings at individuals’ homes in Hammersmith, Hampstead and Homerton, at a boys’ school in Brentford and at other NHS units – Kentish Town Community Mental Health Centre and the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill.

Such drawing from life requires trusting relationships with individuals and institutions, and it has been a wonderful experience of learning and discovery. Each individual led me on a search, as I wanted to draw not only the people but also the components in the portraits from life. Sometimes I used their personal possessions, but I found most of the animals, plants and other objects at the Royal College of Physicians, Kew Gardens and University College London’s Grant Museum of Zoology, Rock Room and Human Anatomy Room.

Through drawing, I have tried to represent the people involved in this project – their histories, medicines, interests and emotional worlds. The greatest privilege for me was being able to meet each person, hear their story, see their environment. Essential to this was learning about the perspective of both patient and psychiatrist, which was possible as I was granted permission to enter wards, sit in on meetings and ward rounds, and meet everyone involved first hand.

For more information about the project...

http://gemmaanderson.wordpress.com/

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.