" A kind of visual invented biology with textiles"
"I find this imagery metaphorically rich since all change fundamentally happens on this infinitesimal level."
"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."
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.
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"
I did not want my work to be morbid, but instead something beautiful, celebrating life.
