Fragility

This drawing is one of many of I made between 2007 and 2008, as part of an extended portrait project for one of the world's longest surviving kidney patients. The project was entitled "Sheila, Anatomy of a Life" and consisted of drawings and prints of Sheila's body; focusing particularly on her hands and arms which embodied the extent to which chronic kidney failure and the consequent treatment over the next twenty years of dialysis and beyond, had shaped her body, her life and her philosophical and spiritual outlook.

Sheila Oliver was diagnosed with kidney failure as a young woman in the early 1960's even before dialysis machines were available in hospitals in Britain - she had to wait, not knowing if she would die before dialysis treatment would be available. She then endured dialysis treatment on the very earliest and most primitive of machines. Due to the scarcity of the machines, external ethics committees were set up in renal units to decide who would receive haemodialysis treatment; those with 'a spouse and a house' were favoured.  

Our collaboration and project was to some extent an attempt to trace Sheila's own life history as well as the history of renal care in Britain since 1960, as seen in the lines, scars, bruises and traces etched onto her skin, and her protruding veins. For example the fistula in her forearm, an artery and a vein fitted together by a vascular surgeon to enable a hook up to the dialysis machine, was constructed in the early 1960's and in a sense can be seen as an embodiment of the history of renal care and a piece of medical history in itself.  Above is a dry-point etching, one of a series, based on a photograph of Sheila taken in my studio in Oxford in 2008.

Above are a series of test books I made for Sheila, the books are experimental works, combining image and text rather than trying to convey a conventional narrative of Sheila's story.  Sheila finally received a kidney transplant in 1989 having survived and endured over twenty years of dialysis treatment.  Sheila's life story is more unusual in that she married her doctor, who also was responsible for setting up the Renal Unit at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.  Her life has been indelibly marked and intertwined with the history and development of Renal care in Britain.

At the time of my collaboration with Sheila between 2007 and 2009 we had hoped to find funding from the Wellcome Trust to make a book and an exhibition about her life, unfortunately I was unable to secure the funding required to see this project through to it's final conclusion, but it is my hope that this work can be completed and exhibited in the future when funding allows.

More text and images to follow.