BLOOD ON SILK

2015

Visual Arts

Artist/s: Fiona Davies

This exhibition by Fiona Davies draws together six new major works from the first stage of the Blood on Silk project. This stage was a cross-disciplinary collaborative project of ideas between a physicist, the late Dr Peter Domachuk, School of Physics University of Sydney, writer Dr Lee- Ann Hall, and  Fiona Davies , a visual artist.

The project's  scientific  foundation was research  undertaken by Peter to develop an implantable silk microchip. The aim was to provide a platform within the human bloodstream to allow the properties of blood cells to be determined or measured while those cells  were still within the body – a biophotonic chip.

Combined was this was Davies response to the death of her  father in 2001. Since then she has  worked with ideas of medicalised death/dying and particularly the almost domesticated rituals of  an intensive care ward involved in taking daily samples of blood. On this foundation the three collaborators  developed a conceptual framework of debate. This framework is broad ranging and scans from the material, cultural and economic contexts for both  silk and  blood through to issues of surveillance and associated concerns about human rights.

An information area  at the centre of the exhibition provides needed background information on the science including a really clear Ted talk by Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto from Tufts University (he was Peter Domachuk's postdpoctoral supervisor) other printed material such as an essay by Nancy  Scheper-Hughes from the human rights  organisation, Organ Watch and most importantly a video produced by Lee-Anne Hall.