Painting

Francesca Hutchinson

Ephemera

Hutchinson’s work practise involves exploring ephemeral materials and their relationship to the transience of life, more specifically the materials latex and clay. She uses these materials to explore representations` of an invisible illness. Whilst taking on the role of an artist from an angled perception, by using her grandmother as her primary investigation. To best depict the evanescence of life, Hutchinson deliberately uses materials that are impermanent.

Hutchinson`s aim is to highlight the unseen areas of an invisible illness, such as the meticulous and mundane activities that consumes a sufferer’s life. Activities such as the laborious act of taking medication and praying. These are physical and psychological acts that are both time consuming and repetitive, but they are also silent and unseen. The artist uses primary research, ‘tablet sheets’ belonging to her grandmother as a reference for this body of work. The tablet sheets are a physical artefact that recorded the action of taking medication, as they include specific details such as a day, date, time, and the name of the action performed. Through an investigation of the materials` surface, such as the repetition of lines and marks on these ‘tablet sheets’, the artist was inspired to mimic this physical and forceful repetition in her material presence. The artist is motivated by exploring how religion and illness can intertwine, and how religion can be used as a form of therapy and healing, through the discourse of mortality.

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