Before the weaving starts and the pattern becomes complicated the strength of a simple black and white stripe carries the day.
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Start of the install – Site 1 at the State Silk Museum Tbilisi.
Category: blood on silk
From Day One of the Install at The State Silk Museum in Tbilisi – Choose the First Site.
This is the first of three sites at the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi choosen for the site specific work Woven Architecture . Thinking more and more about the power structures of architecture and the ways this is carried over to the contemporary architectural response and of course how that is translated into hospital and ICU design.
Images of the Exhibition – Cast a cold eye on life, on death: The Remake: Medicalised Death in ICU online.
online at http://www.fionadavies.com.au
videos of the performative lecture will be online by the end of this week
Works in progress still messing around before becoming playing tokens.
Just standing on your head waiting for the glue to dry that is sticking a button to your feet. Small figurines becoming playing tokens for a modified version of snakes and ladders that leads the players through a game outlining the stages of heart failure.
The game lies inside the wonder cabinet zinc box of Blood on Silk: Total Artificial heart (TAH). This work, the last in the series of five wonder cabinet works, provides another point of focus on the most elemental force behind the movement of blood and blood products: the beating of the heart. The heart is also one of the transplantable body parts and this junction between blood and body parts, the heart forms a focal point in this work.
Work in progress – Blood on Silk: Blood Farming/ The Producers
First image of a work looking more closely at blood farming. I’m trying to capture the liminal space occupied by the loneliness of the those abandoned by the system and by others. She looks a little too much like she is wearing a uniform at the moment. Thinking of painting a pattern of small flowers along the hem of her dress.
Second post on the installation: Where They were Last Seen, at SCA gallery Sydney.
To continue from the last post from late this month – this image is of another element of the work Where they were last seen, my installation selected by two Masters of Art Curating students, Tian Kang and Yunyan Tang for their exhibition Being towards Death in Gallery five of the Sydney College of the Arts/ University of Sydney Gallery. The curatorial premise developed by Tian and Yunyang resulted in a more direct focus on the physicality of the Intensive Care Unit.
The image shows a detail of another of the main elements of the space. This large blanket work frames two walls and is approximately nine metres in width and three metres in height. Made of strips of grey woollen coat fabric, the surface is slightly fluffy and cuddly, but the colour is austere and forbidding. Acting as a record of instances of the patient’s heart rate, blood pressure and oxygenation the hand sewn components are built up to contain both the internal skin of the site wrapped around the bedspace of the patient located in the middle of the gallery.
The exhibition was part of the Curatorial Lab component of the Masters of Art Curating program.
Being Towards Death, the exhibition
In Gallery five of the Sydney College of the Arts/ University of Sydney Gallery two Masters of Art Curating students, Tian Kang and Yunyan Tang selected my new installation Where they were last seen for their exhibition Being towards Death. Gallery five is an interesting mix between being a white cube and a non-white cube space. In this installation developed specifically for this exhibition and this site, the curatorial premise developed by Tian and Yunyang resulted in a more direct focus on the physicality of the Intensive Care Unit. The image shows a detail of one of the main elements of the space. The patient bedspace is sited directly underneath a large roof lantern or skylight. The overbed hospital table holds the bedside medical monitor playing the simulation of the visual data and sonic traces of a patient bleeding out while the silk paper bed and pillow shape refutes the functionality of the bed by its ephemeral, flimsy and seemingly transitory nature. The next post will address one of the other elements of the installation, the blanket work.
Fiona Davies Where they were last seen (detail) 2018
Installation, silk paper, found objects, video, framed print, photographic print and fabric.
Size variable as installed Gallery 5 SCA Gallery Sydney. Photo credit Alex Gooding
In terms of the bedspace of the patient the body in healthcare settings occupies a complex but somewhat ambivalent position: it is at the centre of everything yet is at the same time oddly displaced and this is even more pronounced once that body is dead. Then apparently there is little tolerance for the sight of the dead body by others. Speciality transports are used to move the body from the place of death to the morgue. This conceals both the presence and/or the shape of the body.
It is possible that this well-intentioned consideration of the sensibilities of the living members of the public work to dislocate or sever the experiences of the recently dead patient’s family and carers. Until death they were associated with a specific location in the hospital, the bed or bedspace of the patient. After death and the transportation of the body to the morgue they tend to be cut free. There is no physical evidence of the patient in the public sphere of the hospital and the family and carers appear to be of limited further interest to the hospital.
The exhibition was part of the Curatorial Lab component of the Masters of Art Curating program.
