Category Archives: Wellcome Trust

‘Making Beauty’ is a collaboration to create a series of artworks in new materials. I’m working in partnership with Dr Richard Day and Professor Alastair Forbes and their colleagues at University College Hospital, London and University of East Anglia, Norwich. The project is a creative response to pioneering therapeutic device developments for regenerative therapy in the context of nutrition and health, and includes the aim of encouraging audiences to consider and examine the ethics of medical research. The projects compliments and extends my continuing interest in the application of unusual materials for art works.
‘Making Beauty’ is being developed with funding from The Wellcome Trust with curatorial support from Gill Hedley and advice from Mark Segal, both also acting as critical friends.

Wellcome – UEA

In the endoscopy unit with Dr Cinzia Papadia.

Finding it so fascinating how many textures and colours are available in our colon

Wellcome – UEA

Spending a day in the operating theatre, as an observer, with Mr Irshad Shaikh at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

The big preparation for the first operation:

Wellcome – UEA

Back in the endoscopy Unit at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, with Dr Cinzia Papadia

Wellcome – studio work

Back at studio drawings made with fat, using call fat ‘imprinting’ techniques

Wellcome – Eastman Dental

The production of the biodegradable glass scaffold, used to support tissue which is being repaired. However it is very fragile and degrades in air, so a delicate nonviable structural support, which seems impossible.

I am in the process of experimenting and looking at developing work from biological glass scaffold production – taking the fibres, which are virtually invisible, using the spinning manufacturing process to make forms to be manipulated into sculptures. In medical use the fibres are tested with current and light, so these sculptures can in turn act as screens or digital devices which can be enhanced with images sources from the gastroenterology department.

Work developed from biological glass scaffold production – taking the discarded products of the manufacturing process – in effect drips and stalagmites of the biological glass, as source materials for a small sculpture.

Wellcome – UCL

Zebra fish embryos which are bleached to determine sex, this made the fish transparent, which is interesting to me as my practice is very much about making the invisible, visible.

Embryo bleaching with Vanessa Lowe:

Wellcome – Bartlett

Visiting Bartlett School of Architecture and looking at the possibilities of using 3-D printing and robotic milling, perhaps other architectural processes, to upscale the microscopic devices and experiments.

Some already printed examples by Richard Beckett and Martyn Carter:

Wellcome – studio work

I am testing using fine metal cable wire, threading it through the lamb intestine, (like the technique used to damage arteries, or endoscopy). This give the intestine sculptural strength so it can be used in ways I’ve not been able to do before.

Preparing and cleaning lamb intestines:

Wellcome – studio work

Back at the studio experimenting with lamb and pig intestine’s, borrowing the air-enema approach used in the hospitals which in addition to giving the intestines form, makes the detail much more visible. I am making number of small works in progress to date and plan to develop this further.