'Living and Dying' Exhibition at the British Museum

The Pharmacopoeia team and 'Cradle to Grave'

I recently went to see Pharmacopoeia (the artistic team consisting of Susie Freeman, Dr Liz Lee and David Critchley)'s 'Cradle to Grave' piece at the Living and Dying permanent exhibition at the British Museum.

One of Pharmacopoeia's most well-known works, 'Cradle to Grave' was created to illustrate the pharmaceutical life of a typical man and woman in modern Great Britain. The piece contains more than 14,000 pills for each person, which is the average amount prescribed during a lifetime.

(This shocking figure and the sheer size of the fabric is an effective way of bringing home the excessiveness of our dependence on pharmaceuticals.)

The piece is fitting with the theme and purpose of the room, which focuses on 'how diverse cultures seek to maintain health and well-being'. It explores our approach to medicinals in our search for a 'healthy' lifestyle and attempts to delay death as effectively as possible.

'Cradle to Grave' is not only made up of pills and tablets, but also of other objects such as photographs depicting personal moments of people's lives (the length of fabric advances in a time-line fashion) and other medical instruments such as syringes, an IV drip, condoms, a wine glass and a dirty ashtray. The photographs reflect personal responses to health, and the other objects represent how people can improve their well-being (through treatments etc.) or harm it (through lifestyle choices such as smoking).

Other pieces in the 'Living and Dying' exhibition show various cultures' approach to well-being and death. There were images of people with a vast quantity of medicinals, while other cultures exhibited traditional techniques and medicines, as is shown in the photos below.

Traditional Chinese medicine - ingredients to make tea, herbal ointment and pills

The 'trapping' technique

Susie Freeman's most popular technique is her pocket knitting, which she uses to trap many tiny, hard objects- usually pills- into fabrics. This is a collection of samples I made interpreting this 'trapping' technique through a slightly different process.

While Freeman creates tight, tiny, individual pockets for her pills, I also sowed around each one because I wanted to secure them in place and have more than one pill in each pocket.

Pills!

Inspired by Susie Freeman's use of pharmaceuticals in her work to get a point across to society, I created some photographic interpretations of people's relationship to pills.

'Veil of Tears', Wellcome Collection

I went to see one of Susie Freeman and Dr Liz Lee's works- 'Veil of Tears' (2007) at the Wellcome Collection in London.

This particular piece isn't aimed so much at raising awareness about pharmaceuticals in Britain, but considers the problem of malaria to a child in Africa.

"In five years the child will probably have had over 1000 infected mosquito bites, been tested for malaria on many occasions and taken a variety of more or less effective drug treatments. She may also have had life-threatening cerebral malaria and been treated with intravenous chloroquine." Susie Freeman and Liz Lee

'Veil of Tears' shows Freeman using different techniques and materials from her typical 'pocket knitting' and pills. Although the work still uses pills, she also adds other objects to convey a more specific image. For example, she includes small photographs of people of the area in Africa she studied, and a baby doll to highlight the illness' effect on children. This shows that she can adapt her work to fight for different causes while maintaining the essence of her art.

The Beginning

My journey started with casual search for textile designers that interested me in a particular way. I have always loved bright multicolour, and after doing some book research Susie Freeman caught my attention in particular. Initially I chose her as one of the artists for my project because her recurring use of pills, amongst other things, always gives her work a variety of colours and makes it pleasing to look at.

Chemical Allsorts

I soon discovered that Susie Freeman aims to convey a message in every one of her works. The incorporation of pharmaceuticals in her pieces is intended to address the problem of Britain's consumption and reliance on modern medicine.

"Cradle to Grave explores our approach to health in Britain today. The piece incorporates a lifetime supply of prescribed drugs knitted into two lengths of fabric, illustrating the medical stories of one woman and one man." British Museum Online Catalogue

Her interest in this issue was the outcome of a "household filled with talk about science-related issues" and her friendship with Dr Liz Lee, a GP. Susie Freeman studied Textiles and Fashion at Manchester Metropolitan University and later took a Textiles course at the Royal College of Art, where she developed a pocket knitting technique which trapped small objects into fabrics (see Chemical Allsorts). Freeman used this technique to combine Dr Lee's medical knowledge with textiles to create "potentially useful artworks that illustrate everyday medical issues."

Susie Freeman uses her art as political statements illuminating these key issues, and so raising awareness in society.

http://www.rowleygallery.com/Artist-Susie-Freeman.aspx

This concept of hers spurred me to continue my research into how textile artists use their art as political statements, to get their views across through a creative medium.

It was easy to find examples of this popular branch of art both in high profile exhibition work...

Tampon Chandelier, Joana Vasconcelos, 2005

...and in everyday fashion.

The Keffiyeh scarf

The Che Guevara shirt