2010
Bath Spa University Gallery, Weston College, Bath.


Death is a sign of life. The symbology of life sits beside the symbology of death. We cannot escape, control or deny our mortality; it is our final appointment we will attend in life. And yet for most, it remains an unacceptable idea; images of death are unpalatable, uncontrollable, painful and often irrational.

Social ethics, beliefs and attitudes towards death in the western post-modern world are catalysts for my obsession with collective mortality. From the inanimate object to the bloody vessel, the ‘grotesque’ is exquisitely drawn and the ‘undesirable’ is crafted in miniature. Small scale monochrome drawings illustrate detailed views of the dissected human body, drawn from a photographic atlas of practical anatomy. The reduction in scale and absence of bloody hues has made what were inescapably graphic and explicit photographs somewhat more palatable, and even beautiful. Such miniature representation elevates the subject to an art object, away from familiar brutal iconography of death.

These works probe our collective response to viewing images death with the physical and psychological nature of mortality being the pivotal theme.