ART ACADEMY LONDON
GRADUATION SHOW 2024
My Grad Show work is an enquiry into society’s complex relationship with drugs.
There seems to be a pill for every ill and every pleasure.
However, from practitioner to patient there are inherent difficulties in the expectation that the medical industry will provide pill-shaped solutions for every ailment. It can produce devastating outcomes such as the OxyContin Opiod crisis or a problem with polypharmacy where a cocktail of prescription drugs produces unfavourable outcomes as medics prescribe within the silos of their specialisation. Women can struggle with extreme side effects of general medication, the vast majority of which is only tested on men. Society’s dependency is complex and the works here explore some of these paradoxical complexities.
The pieces here present an unspoken subtext, embracing issues of sexuality, desire, body image, ageing, ill health and the impact of sliding from person to patient.
Working with resin or plaster pills that have been cast from empty blister packs that have been part of my own recent landscape, I repurpose the familiar within sculptural forms articulating a paradoxical tension between the ubiquitous and the unwanted, relief and resentment, fear and faith.
SHIFT
This work explores the shift of perception from patient back to person, from vulnerability to vigour and is a reclamation of my own narrative interwoven with a paradoxical nod to the protective elements of medication. Pop Art colours and awkward stylised 60’s fashion poses showcase a shift dress made from used pill packets and metal binders. The dress acts as a carapace or chain mail to protect while enabling free movement.
Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl paper 6 x 42 cm x 59 cm
XANANGST
An articulation of the anxiety and confusion around a medication protocol.
Found cabinet, medication packets and blister packs
34 cm x 16 cm x 50 cm
LIGHT RELIEF
Referencing faith in medication and its ability to provide relief this work echoes stained glass windows found in religious settings. Suggestive of the diurnal round with sunrise and sunset colours, the work references compliance to performance of faith. The 4,000 resin pills comprising this work represent my medication protocol over 18 months.
Resin on Perspex 100 cm x 50 cm x 21 cm arc
DATE NIGHT
Exploring the unspoken subtext of loss of libido as a side effect of medication.
Plaster, jesomite, satin 140 cm x 45 cm x 85 cm
NOT WAVING
Drawing inspiration from Stevie Smith’s poem “Not Waving But Drowning”, this work expresses the essential paradox of needing daily medication. Your opinion is informed by your point of view.
Plaster, jesmonite
21cm x 30cm
