Coughing up Blood, 2019, Silk paper, metal, paint and found objects, dimensions variable
During most of World War II tuberculosis was treated by isolation, rest, nutrition and clean air. Sanatoriums to provide treatment including isolation had been established in the Blue Mountains for many years and infected soldiers were often treated here. Coughing up Blood is concerned with an individual patient infected with tuberculosis, not the statistics on the total number of deaths or the frequency of infection, nor on the public health programmes designed to reduce the numbers of infected. This work focuses on the sick returned soldier, alone, frightened and uneasy. It is the landscape of the liminal space of the patient in isolation, both physically and emotionally. They exist between the well, well enough and the dead, the soldier and the civilian, those “over there” in immediate danger and those in limbo at home.
This is not a visually complicated work. The elements are stripped back to the minimum. You can see the hospital curtain, the inner isolation room, the empty bed and the back-lit image of the infected lungs. The beautiful but ineffective hospital curtain is made of silk paper hanging high above our heads unable to provide what is expected. It can’t be washed. It doesn’t give the patient any privacy, sight, sound or smell. Bad news given to the patient behind the curtain can be overheard by others on the ward. The bed is empty, the patient is elsewhere. Their absence is felt with unease by the visitor. They may have just died. There isn’t a new patient in the bed yet. It may have only just happened. In this work Davies Focuses on the liminal and temporal nature of death as it is framed by illness and disease within a hospital
The other artists in this exhibition were Vivienne Dadour, Anne Graham, Chris Tobin, and Sean O’Keeffe. Vivienne Dadour also curated the exhibition. Photo credit Patricia Kleemann
