My work explores our relationship with our bodies specifically at times of vulnerability and ‘bodily doubt’ (Creamer, 2019). I am curious about how we construct personal narratives to enable us to navigate experiences of trauma and illness and how the value of these stories is beginning to be recognised through the relatively new discipline of ‘narrative medicine’; a medical approach that utilises people's narratives in clinical practice, research, and education as a way to promote healing. 

 

These ideas manifest in my practice as a concern with combining the narratives we form around our bodies, illness and trauma with a phenomenological sense of what it is to be human. Often using historic medical collections as primary research material my work is a series of three dimensional assemblages created using a palette of hand-dyed textiles and distemper impregnated canvas. These are brought together into sculptural forms using ‘free sewing’ where I incorporate strips of textile, string and latex into the stitched line as I am making it, which mimics the gestural mark-making that characterises my drawing and painting. The properties of the materials dictate the initial shape of the work which is then exaggerated or augmented by stuffing and wiring and painting with wax or more distemper. The resulting ‘bodies’ hang, slump or sit, weighted by the addition of cast plaster forms. Light is used to activate the translucent properties of the wax and sheer textiles, adding to a sense of the corporeal.

 

The aim of my work is to engender ideas through sensation, perceptions about what it is to be human and to live in a mortal body in a vulnerable world.

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Reference

Creamer, A-M (2019) The Wounded Storyteller: on speaking vulnerability, acknowledging dependence Symposium on Vulnerability and Resistance Central Saint Martins, UAL, London 26 June 2019 Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/groups-networks-and-collaborations/creative-practices-education-and-wellbeing-research-network/on-vulnerability-and-resistance-symposium (Accessed: 9 June 2020 dates)