Blood on Silk: The uniform of the patient: Hanging up neatly, 2021, fabric, thread and found objects.
Shown as part of the SCAMP mentoring project in Cessnock, NSW Australia was a suite of works grouped together and titled 'Blood on Silk: The uniform of the patient: Hanging up neatly', 2021 fabric, thread and found objects. This installation was the result of a public programme, mentoring project, SCAMP developed by Dr Merryn Hull in the Cessnock LGA. Eight high school students were paired with professional artists. The mentoring project extended over the most recent lockdown. My mentee is interested in the skin and bones of the body as the structure and surface of the art practice of tattooing. Working collaboratively, we focused on the body. As with the references in previous work to the lack of visual and aural privacy in hospital curtains, these objects, these hospital gowns are held together by a single knot and also do not provide visual privacy for the body of the patient.
The hospital gown is also an object within the medical system and is circulated to the end user, the patient, by often obscured chains of supply and resupply. As with many mass manufactured items of clothing the hospital gown is frequently made by workers with precarious wages and conditions. The term precarious can be used to describe a wide range of workers including the self-employed, those employed in large factories or supply organisations, and at the extreme end of the continuum, indentured workers. It is a term associated with low wages or low payment per task, uncertain or unreliable income streams, little or no control about the number of hours worked, doing “low-skill” work or, more realistically, having an easily replaceable skill. It is often associated with poor and unsafe conditions and representation. Many of the workers in the clothing, textile, and supply industries live precarious working lives. As do many of the workers in the service components of the medical industries.
Made of various types of fabric the hospital gown is usually not a single use item. it requires laundering. When it is taken off the stack and given to the patient to wear it becomes the uniform of the patient. The recognisable signifier of the status of the patient within the power structure of the medical system.
photo credit Alex Gooding
Works of the mentee and the mentor as installed.
The work Blood on Silk: Uniform of the Patient is the third work discussed in this MAPBM Show and Tell session from September 2021