Blue Mountains-based and internationally established artist Fiona Davies brings her ground-breaking series of artworks, Blood on Silk, to Penrith to explore themes of medicalised death and particularly, the domesticated rituals undertaken by staff in an intensive care ward.
Davies’ current theoretical practice examines ideas of the scientific, cultural, economic, technological and aesthetic intersections between blood and silk. These works form an installation which links the closed curtains around a hospital bed, the physical evidence of blood outside the body in a bleeding out event, and the isolation and emotional impact of both. The wondrous backlit screens showcase these patterns, clots and streams of red weaving through silk fabric, while massive, delicate silk paper screens envelope the Joan’s Atrium Foyer.
Davies’ work is not only grounded in personal experience surrounding the death of her father over months in the ICU, but is also inspired by medical professionals and the late physicist, Dr Peter Domachuk, whose research in optical and experimental physics led him to explore the use of silk in the emerging field of biophotonics, developing implantable silk designed to provide a platform to measure cells within the human bloodstream.
From 2009 until his death in 2012, Domachuk collaborated closely with Davies on her Blood on Silk series of works. The two explored new ways of documenting their own research from merging their different perspectives and ways of approaching creativity to produce Davies’ bloody, surrealist work.
Immerse yourself in curiosity - the instinct to question, to think, to explore - as art and science transform The Joan’s Atrium Foyer into an energetic, innovative, social space where art and science collide to challenge what we already know, inspiring us to look for answers.
Gore is on display in the foyer of The Joan from 2 – 30 July.
