Friday 13 May 2016

Circulatory System Prints



As usual with this set of prints I was looking to abstract from what we normally see in medical art. By using gold and silver instead of red and blue for the arteries and veins I was attempting to keep the balance of warm and cool tone, but by shifting the colour, and adding that metallic quality, I hoped to in increase the visibility of the circulatory system in terms of active viewing. I wanted to create a piece where a viewer would not just think, "oh, its the arteries," and move on. As with all my work I'm trying to inspire a conversation and reflection on the processes and structures of the viewers body. 


I was apprehensive about doing a skull print. The skull is a structure with high visibility already, I didn't want to just do another skull, something which would be oversaturated with work that's come before. Alexander McQueen, Damien Hurst, etc, people do fantastic work with the skull and create some really inspiring objects and images, but in terms of shifting the conversation to one of anatomy and inspiring those without a background in human biology I felt like I need to create something more than just another skull. For this reason I chose to include the arterial structures of the face, again adding that touch of warmth with the gold tones. The aim was for viewers to see this and think, 'oh, it's a skull... thats nice,' but find that extra information on closer inspection, to get them to possibly think "what are these lines, what are they for? Are they arteries? Nerves?' and to possibly seek more knowledge on whats going on in the image. 


I exhibited these prints at Freedom Mills with a few of my nervous system prints, which was quite successful in terms of physically putting my work out there. 


As usual you can find snapshots of my process and work on instagram