As installed at Campbelltown Arts Centre June / July 2014
Still Photo Credits Alex Gooding, Martin Lukersmith, Zan Wimberley, Alex Wisser
Video Credits Fiona Davies, Alex Gooding
Full Description
This exhibition at Campbelltown Arts Centre Sydney Australia was of six of the major or most important visual works from the first stage of the project Blood on Silk. The project was a collaboration of ideas between the late Dr Peter Domachuk, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Dr Lee Anne Hall, a writer, and Fiona Davies a visual artist.
This collaboration arose from an accidental intersection during the development of an installation in the School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia in 2010 by Davies. That work was one of the series loosely based on narratives of the dying and death of Davies' father in 2001. During the four and a half months her father spent in intensive care in RPA the daily routine including taking of blood samples became normalised / domesticated. This process of domestication was one of the most important ideas in those works.
The late Dr. Peter Domachuk's research project was the development of a silk implantable microchip allowing real time measurement of the properties of blood while that blood was still circulating within the body. These silk microchips were to be refined, transparent and dissolvable therefore disposable, a biophotonic chip.
These six works refer and respond to some of the major ideas discussed in this collaboration . This framework of ideas is broad ranging and scans from the material, cultural and economic contexts for both silk and blood through to issues of surveillance and associated concerns about human rights.
Work metadata
- Year Created: 2014
- Submitted to ArtBase: Sunday Sep 14th, 2014
- Original Url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvCc7DLSY2o
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Work Credits:
- FionaDavies, primary creator
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Artist Statement
Blood on Silk: Trade Conflated with Blood on Silk Campbelltown
The single work Blood on Silk: Campbelltown uses layers of handmade silk paper both to define the structure of the gallery space and to partially conceal it. Working as a semi permeable membrane some things are allowed to pass and others held. The silk paper is beautiful, isolating and with its references to connective tissues and funeral shrouds, forlorn, invoking the ideas and experiences of absence.
Onto this work is projected the second series of work , the three video works Blood on Silk: Trade 2011,2012 and 2013. In a series of three month long residencies over three years at Caravansarai in Istanbul Davies investigated the overlay of trade; the older silk trading routes with the newer routes for bio-products including blood. The works she produced during these residencies includes these meditative, almost abstracted video works. Shot from the rooftop terrace of the residency down six floors to the street where hardware shops are opening up in the morning. The choreography of the street is slowly revealed as each prepares to trade.