My Creepy Crawly

MY CREEPY CRAWLY

During my third year at Michaelis School of Fine Art we were allowed to make our first self motivated work. For the first time since joining the art school, I was able to choose what I was going to make, what it was about, and how I was going to do it.

This project is an assemblage made of medical and machine parts.  It is about the immpression I have of 'living' on the dependence of a machine. This is an attempt to show how I see the fragility, isolation, restriction and solitude.

This formed in my imagination while lying in bed and thinking about how i could be lying on the bottom of a swimming pool looking up at the water surface.  My father, Charles Vincent, suffered from kidney failure for many years and I often thought of him being stuck in bed or connected to a machine that kept him there.

While imagining my bedroom/swimming pool I often thought about my Dad's condition.  When considering his dialysis machine that cleaned his blood, I thought of his machine being like a Creepy Crawly in my imaginary swimming pool that kept me company and conditioned my environment. Thinking of the loneliness and the constant beat of the machine, a comfort and a reminder.

This projected was displayed at my final year exhibition at Michaelis 2009.  It was installed with in the room to transform the room into some sort of a hyrbid tank. Entering through the air vent the pipes were suspended above and then lead down to the actual Creepy Crawly machine that sat on the floor. With it was a sound piece that was a mix of a heart beat and the sound of a scuba driver inhaling.  On the walls I had detail photographs of the Creepy Crawly pinned up as if for diagnosis, and four portholes.  These portholes are something of a self-portrait, as 'looked out' to the corridor of a hospital where I am standing.

'Untitled'