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Five2Watch: Health and Wellbeing


In response to our current series of events titled The Body Season, we've selected five artists who have explored health and wellbeing as part of their practice, featuring: Anna Dumitriu, Paula Garcia Stone, Elly Clarke, Candice Jacobs and Christopher Tipping.


Pastorianum, 2018

Anna Dumitriu

"Pastorianum" (2018) made using raw flax, antique human hair wreaths, Clostridium difficile impregnated cloth (sterilised), bacteria from a Winograsky Column, embroidery, linen damask, flax seeds and resin.

The work explores linen as a metaphor for our relationship with biotechnology and ecology focussing on its relationship to witchcraft and medicine. As the first biofabric linen is created through an interaction with nitrogen fixing bacteria and plant fibres. The bacterium responsible is Clostridium pasteurianum, originally called Clostridium pastorianum - literally translating to a spindle from the field discovered by Sergei Winogradsky in 1893. More recently Clostridium difficile has become a human pathogen.

Anna Dumitriu


Transplant; my brief love affair with a pancreas, 2009 - 2010

Paula Garcia Stone

Transplant; my brief love affair with a pancreas. Duration: 07.13 minutes

In this soundscape I reflect on my experience of being on a transplant ward at the Manchester Royal Infirmary as I aim to re-create the contrast of noise bombardment with moments of quiet, the rhythms of the drip machines, the constantness of it all. These wards are very noisy as there are many machines around you, constantly beeping or alarming, as well as just ticking over. The journey takes us from what seems to be a relatively quiet Intensive care unit, to the busy ward, and finally the isolation room.

The drama is played out through the narrative, leading to the battle to hold onto the transplanted organ. Medical treatment can often feel like a battle against nature - I paced around the bed with my drip and monitor on wheels, like a caged animal.

cellsonance · Transplant; my brief love afair with a pancreas(clip)

HOW ARE YOU? #Sergina’s Participatory Soap Opera about Wrestling with Wellbeing in the Digital Age, 2019

Elly Clarke

Performed at ONCA in Brighton with Vladimir Bjelicic on 8th June 2019. This work was since adapted to an online only presentation.

With support of CHASE Feminist Network, #Sergina (plural) took over ONCA to present a new performance entitled HOW ARE YOU? to reflect upon the aggressive, increasingly capitalist nature of the question ‘How are you?’ and other questions that inevitably follow., in the context of a world experienced increasingly via screens. Asked of the audience in person and via digital and paper questionnaires, the questions included:

What do you feel?
What are you feeling right now?
What feeling do you evoke?
How do you make others feel?
Can you be good to people?
Can you make people feel good?
Can you heal people, can you heal yourself?
Can you be reformative?
Can you be positive?
Can you be hopeful?

The performance took place over Three Acts, with the possibility for the audience to commission live dances and selfies with #Sergina during the second and third acts. This is the first time Clarke and Bjelicic performed together in the same physical space, although Zoom was nevertheless used throughout the performance as the key means through which we (the #Sergina agents) were in touch.


ASTROLOGICAL PROFILE III, 2016

Candice Jacobs

ASTROLOGICAL PROFILE III, 2016

Postcript, Camden Arts Centre, London

(8min audio loop, x3 1m x 1m digitally printed floor cushions with images taken from Bruce Forsyth’s Price Is Right gameshow)

Audio meditation taking inspiration from the Astrological Profile of Jenny Lomax, when she started as Director of Camden Arts Centre 25 years previously, using the artists own interpretation and script from this set of signs and symbols the audio explores a generic yet extremely personal translation of character, gender, power and space.

Using the artists voice, script and audio filters, Jacobs mimics vocal ASMR techniques found on Youtube.

Candice Jacobs


Rogallo Place, Rochester, 2019

Christopher Tipping

I have created abstract motifs inspired by various plans for ‘flexible wings’ such as Delta shaped airfoils and Ram-air types to create assemblies and group formations, which are intercut and mixed with drawings of plants and landscape. At a small-scale these new formations may themselves resemble flowers and plants within an abstract landscape. The groups are also suggestive of people and individuals coming together to form new associations and a new community.

This contextually driven approach is further inspired by aerial views of the locale taken from historic maps and Google Earth images as well as information gathered from local historic sources to create abstract motifs suggestive of clouds and patterns of updraft and airflow experienced by fliers, as well as textures and colours of field patterns and woods.
Some of the artwork has been digitally printed onto optically clear vinyl and applied to the floor to ceiling glazing screens of the Entrance and Reception areas of the building.
Digitally printed vinyl manufactured and installed in collaboration with VGL Reading. A monolithic granite seat was also created working in collaboration with Hardscape. This item is sandblasted with motifs.

Christopher Tipping

Published 15 July 2022

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