Collaboration: Blood on Silk
Blood on Silk is a cross disciplinary collaborative project between the late Dr Peter Domachuk, Dr Lee Anne Hall and Fiona Davies. This collaboration arose from an accidental intersection while Fiona was developing an installation in the foyer of the School of Physics at the University of Sydney Australia in September – October 2010. That work was titled Memorial / Double Pump Laplace II, and was the second in a series of three, site specific installations, loosely based on narratives of the dying and death of Fiona's father, in 2001. During the four and a half months her father spent in intensive care the daily routine taking of blood samples became part of the pattern of the day.
The late Dr. Peter Domachuk's research project adds new layers through the study of silk implantable microchips to allow real time measurement of the properties of blood while that blood is still circulating within the body. These silk microchips are refined, transparent and dissolvable therefore disposable, a biophotonic chip. Dr. Lee-Anne Hall a creative writer and museum studies expert also added layers of interpretation to the collaboration.
The group’s thinking on the issues to address includes
The materiality of silk as a 'natural' protein fibre, 'green', 'sustainable', produced by an insect as the cocoon of the silkworm, triangular cross section, non allergenic
The cultural history of silk . 'silk routes' pathways of commercial, cultural and technological exchange Early industrial espionage (Byzantine period) associated with stealing the technological information about how to make methods of making silk yarn form the cocoons, Islamic teachings against the wearing of silk by men
The materiality of the refined silk / fibrion It's characteristics - transparent, castable or mouldable, conformable to flat or patterned surfaces, cast or spin coat; water content and method of drying drives dissolvability and disposability.
The mechanism of reading blood characteristics in the array; patterning and organisation
The concepts of reading the body in real time; the possibility of self monitoring; instead of the sample being removed from the body to be read, it remains part of the body. The testing process is internalised rather than an external process.
The medical ethics debate and the cost of health care.
The relationship between humans and other animals. There are reports of an animal rights movement that disapproves of the death of silkworms in the process of obtaining silk. It is possible to get silk from what is called pierced cocoons, ones that the moth has left naturally. Prior to commercial use the testing of implantable chips in animals/humans?
Human rights through other uses of implantable chips; issues of surveillance or monitoring.
Recent Exhibitions from this Project
2023/2024
Blood on Silk: One, 2012 Accelerator Gallery Culture at Work, Pyrmont, Silk and rice paper, and found objects
Blood on Silk: No or non Exit in the Western Sydney University exhibition Women (seen) 2023 to 2024
From the WSU website;
“Drawn from Western Sydney University’s Art Collection and loans from artists or their estate, Women (seen) celebrates 20 women artists connected to Western Sydney through work, study, family, or home.
Exhibiting artists: Marian Abboud, Eddie Abd, Janice Bruny, Fiona Davies, Helen Grace, Cassandra Hard Lawrie, Kirtika Kain, Debra Keenahan, Margo Lewers, Audrey Newton, Mylyn Nguyen, Raquel Ormella, Debra Porch, Leanne Tobin, Catherine Rogers, Robyn Stacey, Justene Williams, Vicki Van Hout, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn and Anastasia Zaravinos aka Adonis. This exhibition was developed by a curatorium: Dr Christine Dean, Hannah Donnelly, Julie Ewington, Margaret Hancock and Shivanjani Lal.
Exhibition info: 23 November 2023 – 26 April 2024
Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Whitlam Institute, Building EZ, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South Campus
The Margaret Whitlam Galleries are open to the public on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Opening hours: 10am - 4pm
photo credit Alex Wisser
List of Blood on Silk Works
Added so far
Blood on Silk: One, 2012 Accelerator Gallery Culture at Work, Pyrmont, Silk and rice paper, and found objects
Blood on Silk: Blood Types, Bleeding Out, 2010 to 2017. video ink wallpaper paste, size and format variable
Blood on Silk: Kandos, 2011, Silk and rice paper, found objects and ink, size variable - as shown at Kandos Projects, Kandos, NSW Australia in 2011.
Blood on Silk : Trade 2011,2012 and 2013 An exhibition of twenty seven and then thirty videos were shown in the window gallery space at Lyttleton Stores in Lawson NSW Australia from March 3rd 2023 to April 3rd 2023.
Blood on Silk: Farnham, 2012, James Hockey Gallery at the University of Creative Arts UCA, Farnham, UK, silk paper, found objects and video.
Blood on Silk: Death 3, 2012, in the exhibition 'Death 3 I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore', at Parramatta Artists Studios, Parramatta, Sydney Australia silk paper size variable
Blood on Silk: Collaboration Starting with Twenty- Three Units of Blood 2013, tablet, digital content, metal, silk, rice paper, ink and pen. 32 x 31 cm (closed)
Blood on Silk: As Per Instructions I, 2013, canvas, paint and nails, 200 x 300 (h) x 70(d) cm
Blood on Silk: Turn to, turn away, 2013, found materials, wire and paint 240 x 300 x 360cm
Blood on Silk Trade, 2011.2012 and 2013. video 20"‘ in the group show Perşembe Pazari Final Cut, the last exhibition of the Caravansarai artist residency on Banka Sokaği, Beyyoğlu, Istanbul.
Blood on Silk: Field of Flowers, 2014, canvas , paint, fabric and found materials, size variable, As shown at Campbelltown Centre of the Arts.
Blood on Silk: Site of Production, 2014 video 1’11” was also shown at the 'Blood on Silk' survey show at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Blood on Silk: As Per Instructions II, III and IV, 2014, canvas, paint, size variable
Blood on Silk conflated with Blood on Silk Trade, 2014 in the survey show at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Blood on Silk: This is not a public exhibition at Tufts Analytical Lab 2014, silk paper and found objects, size variable. As installed for two and a half days in the analytical lab in the Biomedical Silk Lab at Tufts University Boston USA in late October 2014
Blood on Silk: Price taker, price maker, 2015 found objects, sound video and print 420 x 220 x 80cm. Installed at the Drabee Road Nursery, Kandos, NSW. Australia as part of Cementa_15. April 2015
Blood on Silk: White Blood Bags Dancing in in the Dappled Sun while being X-rayed, 2015, video 3'31"
Blood on Silk: Magenta, 2015, 285 x 285 x 29(d)cm satin ribbon, canvas, paint and wood
Blood on Silk: Bleeding Out, 2016 metal, glass, paint, ink, projection and found objects, 135 x 78 x 96(h)cm.
Blood on Silk: Bleeding Out Internally (The Book), 2016 rice and other papers, ink thread and found objects, 32 x 20 x 5(d) cm
Blood on Silk at Das KloHäuschen, 2016, Munich, Germany, two exhibitions, a series of video nights and a performance .
Blood on Silk: Buy/sell, 2017, Zinc, fabric, ink, video and found objects, 165 x 70 x 110 (h)cm
Blood on Silk: Last Seen, 2017, silk and rice paper, video, metal and found objects, 13.8x12.7x26.5m.
Blood on Silk: last Seen at SCA, 2017, silk paper, and found objects, size variable as installed in Gallery five at SCA at the Kirkbride, Rozelle Campus of the University of Sydney.
Blood on Silk: Performative Lecture, 2019 as part of my PhD examination in the SCA Galleries at Kirkbride, Sydney Australia
Blood on Silk: Blood Types, Bleeding Out, 2010 to 2017. video ink wallpaper paste, size and format variable
This is part of the second wave of works in the Blood on Silk collaboration. They included videos, projections, static images and an installation.
This is a segment of a video work format. The blood type bleeds out into a bed of wallpaper paste that is on a backing of rice paper. The video is twenty minutes long and the movement of the action of bleeding out is almost imperceptible and is difficult to see in real time.
This video starts about ten minutes after the letter and plus sign was drawn into the bed of paste.
'Blood on Silk: Kandos' 2011, Silk and rice paper, found objects and ink, size variable - as shown at Kandos Projects, Kandos, NSW Australia in 2011.
The director/ curator of Kandos Projects, Anne Finnegan wrote of this installation that -'‘This proved to be one of our more unpopular but highly successful shows in terms of the strong negative reactions the work produced. The comments of passers by were regularly peppered with expressions like “creeps me out” as people responded on a visceral level to what was intuitively a set of shrouds. The hand-beaten silk tapa had an uneven ragged and even spidery texture, especially around the edges. This was suggestive of age, of even a world weariness, a fraying, which, when coupled with the weblike association, called to mind the creepy crawlies which invade places of abandon and the tomb.
Given the shape of the windows, the hanging of the silk tapa cloths effectively created a set of draped coffins. Also you couldn’t see through the tapa cloth, except at the bottom, and only the bare, wooden boards of floor were visible. This created a spooky effect of dread, of an absent presence behind the shrouds, shockingly in the bright light of day. Funereal trappings were thus, by suggestion, displaced from more venerable or hallowed settings like the cemetery or the funeral service, creating a psychic disjuncture, a sense that things were not where they should be, a suggestion of death ostensibly in broad daylight, in the middle of a shopping precinct between the bakers and the newsagents, even though nothing specific was there to be seen.'
An exhibition of twenty seven and then thirty videos were shown in the window gallery space at Lyttleton Stores in Lawson NSW Australia from March 3rd 2023 to April 3rd 2023. A new video was shown every day. The videos could be seen twenty four hours a day from the footpath outside and inside during opening hours. They were also shown for those thirty days on the home page of this website and on my linked in page.
The videos were shot in the hardware retail district of Beyoglu in Istanbul. The work is meditative, almost abstracted, shot from a single position looking down six floors to the street below where three hardware shops are opening up for the morning’s trade. The choreography of the street is revealed as each shop prepares their public face for their customers, their trade. That given moment of the day is entered into, observed and felt. Co-incidences of repeated actions are observed and noted. Only in one video did I come down to film on the street. One Sunday on a largely unpopulated street the role of the filmmaker was acknowledged and greeted.
'Blood on Silk: Farnham' was installed in the James Hockey Gallery at the University of Creative Arts UCA, Farnham, UK in October 2012. Monumental sheets of handmade silk paper were hung in a maze like/hospital bed/ICU bed bay configuration from the ceiling of the two story gallery. The perspective from the walkway or corridor that opened onto the upper level of the gallery could only be accessed by the staff and resulted in them being able to experience an intimate and secure view. On the ground floor the audience had limited opportunities to see beyond eight metres and in this position the experience could be disorientating.
Blood on Silk: Death 3 was shown in the exhibition I also curated titled 'Death 3 I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore', at Parramatta Artists Studios, Parramatta, Sydney Australia 2012
The critic and academic Ann Finegan wrote in the exhibition room sheet that ‘Fiona Davies’ funereal shrouds, of cobwebby, white, handbeaten silk cloth, hanging in uneven shards, is such a veil, shielding and protecting from this horror of the dead. The corpse in its winding sheet, the hospital curtains, the sheet pulled up: already the body is far from us, even in this liminal proximity, tainted with dread, with mourning. Davies has no need to present us with a literal corpse. The winding sheet is already enough. Death makes us trade in signs. The body tarted up by the mortician, in an open casket, has already become a sign.
But there’s something else in Davies’ funereal drapes, a ghostliness, a presencing as if there were something more behind the veil The same cloths which separate and protect, like Turin’s famous shroud, seem to carry the imprint of a trembling liveness, an uneasy promise of contact. It seems that through those drapes we mediate a kind of relationship with the dead, somewhat akin to the proximate distance of gloved hands. We will never quite touch again what lies on the other side of the veil, and yet, the shroud. paradoxically seems to keep death close, tabooed at close quarters.
Davies understands the trade in signifiers, however subtle, and how the marks and strands of silk beaten unevenly into matted submission in her cloth, seems to correspond to material, earthly struggles. Her shrouds stand in for, and displace, the dead in a medicated relationship, in which a chain of substitutes- clothes, and wrappings - protect us, proximately , whilst placing us in a zone of near communication. Were the dead to whisper we would hear them through these shrouds of silk.
Photo credit Alex Wisser
Blood on Silk: Collaboration Starting with Twenty- Three Units of Blood 2013, tablet, digital content, metal, silk, rice paper, ink and pen. 32 x 31 cm (closed) Images by Fiona Davies with text by Ann Finnegan
Like the travelogue of Twentysix Gasoline Stations (produced in 1963 by Ed Ruscha) this book, Collaboration starting with twenty-three units of blood, uses a combination of old and new means of interaction to track a journey. The sobering question examined in text and image is what happens to a collaborative partnership when one party dies. Physical markers of the collaboration punctuate the journey in a similar manner to the photographs of service stations in Ruscha’s book, while the text allows a nuanced reflection to develop.
Twenty- three images of blood seen from both sides of each sheet of paper, as if coming and going from one body to another, are partnered with twenty- three images of the collaboration. This artist book was part of Bound Unbound an exhibition at the Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney from 31st July to 7th September 2013 curated by Rhonda Davis and John Potts.
Blood on Silk: As Per Instructions I' 2013, canvas, paint and nails, 20 x 30 (h) x 7(d) cm
A survey exhibition at Artspace of the work of Ian Milliss, titled 'Notes on the Works' included my work 'Blood on Silk: As per Instructions I' as one of a number of instructional works which had been made and remade by others over the years of his practice.
The instructions to me for this work were relatively simple - I was to use strips of canvas, 200mm or so wide and what ever length I wanted, make them whatever colour I wanted and nail the strips to the wall in whatever way I wanted.
My work 'Blood on Silk: As per Instructions I' is a visualisation within the instruction I was given of the typical pattern formed by eight drops of blood falling from a height of one metre. In this visualisation the eight drops of blood have slid down the wall and onto the floor. The work as well has slid down the wall and onto the floor. The work has not followed the instructions and it was always very likely that it wouldn’t.
'Blood on Silk: Turn to, turn away', 2013, found materials, wire and paint 240 x 300 x 360cm
Installed on Banka Sokaği, Beyyoğlu, Istanbul and slung high between two buildings, the fifteen panels in Blood on Silk: Turn to, turn away spin displaying an enchanting readiness to trade, yet also ready to turn away in the dance of exchange.
The red and white striped panels reference the barber’s pole formerly the sign of a surgeon. The panels are made from discarded woven polyethylene packaging, overpainted with red and then hung from a swivel joint allowing movement in most directions.
When the wind falls away the abject nature of the installation reveals itself with the panels hanging like carcasses of meat. Istanbul the site of this installation is at the intersection of the older trading routes for silk with the new routes for bio-products such as blood.
'Blood on Silk Trade', 2011.2012 and 2013. video 20"‘ was included in Perşembe Pazari Final Cut, the last exhibition of the Caravansarai artist residency on Banka Sokaği, Beyyoğlu, Istanbul.
The videos were shot in the hardware retail district of Beyoglu in Istanbul. The work is meditative, almost abstracted, shot from a single position looking down six floors from the roof terrace of the artist Residency Caravansarai to the street below where three hardware shops are opening up for the morning’s trade. The choreography of the street is revealed as each shop prepares their public face for their customers, their trade. That given moment of the day is entered into, observed and felt. Co-incidences of repeated actions are observed and noted. Only in one video did I come down to film on the street. One Sunday on a largely unpopulated street the role of the filmmaker was acknowledged and greeted.
In this exhbition the work was installed in one of the upper rooms of the residency and in this image is of the same work projected into the landing of the stairwell. That room had formerly been used as one of the many offices of the hardware suppliers and traders in this particular section of Istanbul.
'Blood on Silk: Field of Flowers', 2014, canvas , paint, fabric and found materials, size variable, As shown at Campbelltown Centre of the Arts
This work consists of thirty museum type display units on plinths or padded ottomans. On each sits three or more hand sewing baskets re-lined with beaded floral fabrics, embroidered flowers, oya or gold paper flowers over the original red, pink or orange linings of the baskets.
This work references cultural material brought to the UK by Sir Aurel Stein and his archaeological expeditions, specifically from Dunhuang and Miran in China. Early textiles, including panels of flowers from Buddhist temple canopies were loaned to the British Museum, British Library, the India Office and the V and A. When in London I was able to research some of the textile material removed by Stein and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection including the silk flowers in the photograph below. It is though that originally they formed canopies or fields of flowers within Buddhist temples along the silk route. The textile collection is being moved to a new building and is not accessible at the moment.
The sewing baskets formerly held the tools of trade. The relatively low height of the plinths/ ottomans focuses the viewer’s attention onto the bottom or the interior of the basket. These interiors have been relined with flowers
'Blood on Silk: Site of Production', 2014 video 1’11” was also shown at the 'Blood on Silk' survey show at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
In this video a repetitive unveiling of the crook, more formally known as the cubital crease, of the human arm reveals the site of blood retrieval as well as the vulnerability and grittiness of misuse in that area of the body. The image of the arm is isolated from any understanding that could be gained from the remainder of the body
The means of providing blood and blood products into the legal and illegal medical systems is complex, highly technical and fraught with issues of safety, cost and coercion. The vulnerability of the repetitive exposing of that section of the arm relocates the crux of the issue with the individual producer of that blood whether or not they do that for economic return within the wider economic framework of medicine.
'Blood on Silk: As Per Instructions II, III and IV, 2014, canvas, paint, size variable
These works roughly followed the same set of Instructions from Ian Milliss but went slightly off focus and definitely became less polished and more degraded.
Still posting works from the 2014 survey show of Blood on Silk held at Campbelltown Arts Centre with the installation of object video and sound Blood on Silk conflated with Blood on Silk Trade.
Blood on Silk: Tufts Analytical Lab 2014, silk paper and found objects, size variable. As installed for two and a half days in the analytical lab in the Biomedical Silk Lab at Tufts University Boston USA in late October 2014
This was not a public exhibition – it could only be seen by those who worked in this particular set of scientific laboratories within the silk laboratory at Tufts University Boston where they ‘.. study the use of silk as an optical material for applications in biomedical engineering, photonics and nanophotonics’
This installation intervened into a process necessary and common within science, that of moving and reorganising equipment from one space to another. In transition a stack of materials lay in the middle of the floor of the analytical laboratory This floor to ceiling installation of silk paper framed this pile of stuff refocusing on the ephemeral nature of the administrative process within the practice of the scientific method. On the last day everything had been moved on leaving a solitary Allen key within the space designated by the silk paper.
Blood on Silk: Price taker, price maker, 2015 found objects, sound video and print 420 x 220 x 80cm
Installed at the Drabee Road Nursery, Kandos, NSW. Australia as part of Cementa_15. April 2015
The manner in which the market works for a person producing and selling their own blood, blood products or body organs is very similar to that for agricultural production. In this context price takers are those whose market activities have limited effect on the market price they receive.
A video work from 2015 'Blood on Silk: White Blood Bags Dancing in in the Dappled Sun while being X-rayed', video 3'31"
I wrote about this work it the time that "A while ago I watched the documentary ‘Night will Fall’ on the liberation of the concentration and death camps in Europe in 1945. Sequence after sequence showed graphic images of degradation, death and horror. Then there was a short interview about the first images from Dachau after liberation. These images were seen and shown in the negative and the shock of the power of those images has stayed with me for a long time.
This work is the first in a series exploring that power of the negative to dislocate your expectations and make you look again. Janette Winterton in an essay many years ago in the Guardian newspaper said that was the purpose of art.
Blood on Silk: Magenta, 2015, 285 x 285 x 20 cm satin ribbon, canvas paint and wood.
In this work the codified pattern of eight drops of blood falling from one metre onto a hard surface is further coded into a weaving pattern, using satin ribbons and solid canvas. Through variations of the dyed colour magenta and the reflective properties of the satin weave in the ribbon, the work responds to the position of the viewer relative to the work and to the angle of light on the photonic device. In addition the location of the work in the gallery space exposes the sideways view of the work to the casual passing viewer in the corridor. Magenta as a name for a colour has been linked with war and bloodshed since the name of the aniline dyestuff Fuchsine was changed in 1859 to magenta to celebrate the French victory at the battle of Magenta in northern Italy.
This work was originally presented in the Magenta exhibition at West gallery in Hazelbrook, curated by Beata Geyer.
Photo credit Alex Wisser
Blood on Silk: Bleeding Out, 2016 metal, glass, paint, ink, projection and found objects, 135 x 78 x 96(h)cm. Selected for the exhibition 'Her Moving Presence' curated by Yvette Hamilton and Danica Knezevic at Airspace, a Sydney Gallery.
As the viewer approaches the table, the projection of drops of blood washes over the homogenised kitchenware in a sensual pattern of spread and retreat. The peepholes in the tabletop allow a partial or blinkered look into a series of linked surreal landscapes, represented by decolourised play and real medical equipment, toys and other found objects. They build up by referencing the emotions or landscapes formed by the hallucinations experienced during a slow and partial bleeding out. Like a semi-permeable membrane, some things are held and others allowed to pass.
Within the zinc box, the scenes are homogenised again by the metallic spray-paint of silver, aluminum or chrome. The artefacts of both play and real medicalised equipment, memories, and trauma are washed over by the projections of dripping blood. When the viewer bends to look into the peepholes found among the glass kitchenware, they become co-opted to form part of the projection surface without necessarily giving informed consent.
Some of the scenes in the box can only be viewed or revealed when the viewer moves part of the artwork by lifting one or more of the spray-painted glassware objects. The viewer is then rewarded for what would usually be considered inappropriate behaviour in an art gallery or museum by being able to see a greater extent of the artwork in more detail. The ways the objects and internal scenes interact with the viewer, allowing and restricting access in response to particular actions, implies the work’s agency.
'Blood on Silk( The Book): Bleeding Out Internally', 2016The work was selected for the group exhibition Prescriptions at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, Canterbury, UK. It was jointly selected by Egidija Čiricaitė and Dr. Stella Bolaki/University of Kent and was later acquired for the rare book collection of the University of Kent.
The book consists of two parts, A and B. The sizes of the two parts are slightly different so it is not obvious that they belong together. Part A is a picture book intended to be touched, pages turned and held close by the reader. The images are representations of the sublime in the materiality of blood or bleeding out (internally). Part B is an instructional manual trying to make sense of a short, traumatic, catastrophic event such as uncontrollable internal bleeding. The patient and the witness experience this event simultaneously but not together.
This book frames an episode of bleeding out (internally) as the narrative of a very short illness. The physical beauty of blood in part A is coupled with the educational, instructional manual in part B to examine the differing body mind responses. Through the artist book format, the physical action of turning the pages and touching the images, the viewer is encouraged to have an intimate, physical relationship with the material.
Blood on Silk at Das KloHäuschen in Munich. 2016. The former urinal of the main fruit and vegetable markets became the site of a series of exhibitions and events, including a series of video nights.
Blood on Silk: Buy/sell,2017, Zinc, fabric, ink, video and found objects, 165 x 70 x 110 (h)cm
Marshall wrote in the catalogue that ‘ Fiona Davies’ installations formulate a diptych within the mirrored offices of The Butler’s Pantry and the Governors Office. Divided by a stairwell, the traffic flow further unites the flow of power between them. Davies site-responsive installations are a continuation of her seminal Blood on Silk project. ……. Davies centers her work on the commerce of blood products and their regulated distribution- a far cry from the Colonial commerce that would have occurred within both offices, but a commerce that would have harnessed much currency if it had been around in Colonial times.’
Blood on Silk: Last Seen at SCA, 2017, silk paper, and found objects, size variable as installed in Gallery five at SCA at the Kirkbride, Rozelle Campus of the University of Sydney.