new exhibition page for the Cancer Ward 12 project!

So, the Cancer Ward 12 Exhibition at the Dynevor Centre Gallery is now closed but you can see it on the new exhibition page on my other project site https://cancerward12.wordpress.com

Once there just click the appropriate heading on the page menu and do scroll down as there is  lot to see!

The exhibition might be over but the work continues. I am currently putting together a publication based on the project which will be available in e-book and print format. More on that very soon.

I hope that you enjoy the page and that it provides some feel of the physical exhibition. Please do send comments/feedback either by posting here or contact me directly: jacsaorsa@hotmail.com   All such feedback really helps in progressing and developing my work.

a polite request

To all my much appreciated followers and supporters of the work towards expressing and articulating patient the lived experience of illness through art. This is an unusual thing for me to do and I hope that you will understand the reasons. So…here goes!

Artes Mundi is an internationally focused arts organisation that identifies, recognises and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience.

Founded in 2002 by Welsh artist William Wilkins, Artes Mundi is best known for its biennial international Exhibition and Prize which takes place in Cardiff. The exhibition is Wales’ biggest and most exciting contemporary visual art show. One of the shortlisted artists is awarded the prize of £40,000, the largest art prize in the UK and one of the most significant in the world.

Here is my respectful request:

Artists must be nominated for the prize and for Artes Mundi 8 all nominations must be submitted by 17:00 GMT on 15th May 2017. I am hoping that someone may able to nominate me for the work that I do. It goes without saying I think that were I to be shortlisted it would be excellent in terms of getting my work seen more and thus help the cause and indeed, were I to actually win the prize money would be of huge advantage in continuing and expanding the scope of my work.

If you feel you can help please follow this link to nominate me:

http://www.artesmundi.org/en/news/artesmundi8nominations

With grateful thanks

Jac

feedback

Here is just a small selection of the many comments and feedback given by visitors to the Breast Cancer; a creative intervention exhibition. I am really delighted that it has been such a success in terms of allowing people to opportunity to reflect on how they understand breast cancer and the experience of those who have gone or are going through it.

For an online version of the exhibition please click on the related page here on this site.

(I am currently working on a new project that relates to the experience of  living with a cancer diagnosis. Cancer Ward 12 will culminate in a further exhibition in June 2017.)

“Outstanding.”

“It made me cry. My sister has had breast cancer and though we talk a lot, this made me really understand what she has been through.”

“Very moving work, captures the positivity, care,determination and talent of this hospital”

“Wonderful exhibition, many of the comments are relevant to other cancer diagnosies. It has helped me to understand what my step son went through.”

“A beautiful exhibition and I also love the writing.”

“Very moving, superbly thought out, also very accurate. I lost my mum to breast cancer in 2014.”

“Loved the gentleness.”

“Powerful. A real glimpse into this journey.”

“Beautiful and uplifting work.”

“Amazing brilliant work which powerfully communicates the cancer journey and what in reality this means for a person. Well done and thanks.”

New page for 2016 exhibition!

Here it is then – a new page on the site dedicated to the Breast cancer: a creative intervention exhibition. If you click on the link above you will find all the work and the texts that made up the show.

Keep scrolling as there is a lot to see…particularly poignant I think are the patient quotes, and the poems that one lady, Jean S., has generously allowed me to publish.

Please feel free to leave some feedback/comments/thoughts on what you see as this is so very useful to me in terms of continuing the work I do.

The launch night was a huge success, more than seventy people turned out and there was a lot of emotion in the room. The Hearth Gallery at Llandough Hospital itself looked stunning (such a wonderful space that it is) and our harpist who was kind enough to play all evening was very much appreciated by all. The Lord Mayor of Cardiff officially opened the exhibition. We have some very powerful feedback/comments in the guest book. The exhibition runs until December 7th so there is still plenty of time to see it if you are able.

My thanks to all concerned with getting this project to this point… the encouragement I have received from so many in the amazing reception of the work is so very much appreciated. But this is still the beginning – there is still so much more to do…….

excellent news for Drawing Women’s Cancer and the new exhibition!

It’s just been confirmed that The Rt. Hon. The Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Councillor Monica Walsh will officially open the Breast Cancer; a creative intervention exhibition on the launch night, Tuesday 8^th November 2016, at the Hearth Gallery in Llandough Hospital. This is great news of course and I am delighted that the Lord Mayor is lending her support to the project in this way. It is especially appropriate as the Lord Mayor herself is very engaged with the issues around cancer research, treatment and patient care. Indeed the charity that  she has nominated to support during her mayoral year in office is Cancer Research Wales.

And more! Another special guest attending the launch is Ms Eleri Turner. She is a professional harpist from Aberystwyth and she has very generously agreed to play for us throughout the evening!

My sincere thanks to both! November 8th promises to be a wonderful event! As a taster of the exhibition itself here a couple of details from the drawings that will be on show.

exhibition invitation

Here it is then! – the official invitation to the Breast Cancer; a creative intervention exhibition. All are welcome to the launch on November 8th.

The exhibition will continue throughout November and there will be accompanying events that offer information about breast cancer and care services as well as first hand Macmillan Cancer volunteer support. We hope to attract visitors to the exhibit from around the country and I look forward very much to meeting those of you who are able to attend the opening night.

good news for the new exhibition

We’ve just heard that once again The Lancet Oncology have taken an interest in my work and will be reviewing the exhibition for Breast Cancer: a creative intervention once it goes up in November! I am delighted of course as it is a great opportunity for the project to be reviewed in such a prestigious publication and it will help further publicise the Drawing Women’s Cancer project as a whole.

So, onward! I am working hard doing 12 hour shifts in the studio at the moment just to get the work completed ready for installation in early November. The exhibition is set to run November 7th to December 7th at the HeARTh Gallery, Llandough Hospital in Cardiff. I will post the exact details and an open invitation very soon.

drawing in the operating theatre

As part of the Breast Cancer: a creative intervention project I am spending time in the operating theatre, observing and making written and visual notes. The images in this post are some examples. The idea is to develop these into more considered works back in the studio.

Despite my having had a lot of experience now of attending operations it is always a unique and profoundly moving thing to watch – especially as one of the patients undergoing a mastectomy was a lady I’d got to know on the ward. Her generosity in her willingness to allow me to be present for the procedure reminded me of other women who have been equally accepting of my request. In fact, some women have let me know that they actually appreciate the fact that someone is ‘there with them’ who is a lay person, neither family or a medical professional. For some, this is a form of comfort for them it seems – even though they know nothing about what is happening. This came vividly home to me when, dutifully and appropriately dressed in blue scrubs, I went into the room just before the patient was anaesthetised. On seeing me so attired she was startled, “You look like one of them now !” The women I have worked with are invariably, and big-heartedly keen to help with the project. They understand my need to understand and ‘experience’ with them – as much as that is possible – the ordeals that they are going through. They make me feel humble.

I am grateful of course also to the professionals who not only tolerate my presence but welcome me into their world. They patiently explain the procedures and answer my questions and  I learn and absorb as much as I can each time I attend an operation. ‘Their world’ does indeed feel like a different place – a place where my sense of beong ‘outwith time’ is as focused as the surgeon’s every move, every cut, and where, even though the patient lies unconscious of whats going on around her, she is the main protagonist in this particular play.

on the ward…

Part of the work I am doing for the Breast cancer: a creative intervention project is to have a presence on the ward and attend, where possible, operations. My first visit to Anwen ward at Llandough hospital here in Cardiff was over two days last week.

I arrived early on the ward. It had been arranged that I should visit on Tuesday and Wednesday (the busiest days of the week) and indeed when I arrived the consultations between patients and anesthetists were in full flow. I discreetly absented myself to the hospital cafe so as not to intrude too much on my first visit. Something I hadn’t realised is that Anwen is directly opposite the Delyth ward where I began visiting patients with gyneacological cancer at the beginning of the Drawing Women’s Cancer project back in 2012. The familiarity, along with a shot of strong coffee, boosted my confidence for the day ahead, because, unusually,  I was feeling not as ‘in control’ of my thoughts and emotions as I have learned to be in previous similar situations. I think that this was because for this project the nature of my presence on the ward is a little different. I am not there to visit specific individuals but rather to simply ‘be’ there hoping to have spontaneous conversations with patients and make drawings and notes of what I see and hear.(Recognising my own discomfort makes the whole underlying concept behind all of the work I do – ie expressing my own experience of the experience of the ‘other’ – comes to the fore. It is something I continue to wok with.)

I was also very aware through listening to women’s experiences that most remember their time on the wards very well – as intensively as the experience itself was intensive – and the memories are not always good! For many women, although the overall experience has been positive for them, there are sometimes painful memories of small things that have upset them at a time when emotions were running high. Often just an ill-considered remark or an action that unwittingly engendered a sense of lack of respect remains in the overall memory, marring the narrative like a ink blot on a page.  I wanted not to become the source of one of these memories…I wanted not to say or do anything ‘inappropriate’.

My fears were unfounded. As soon as I walked onto the ward I fell into conversation with a patient there who was happy to talk and share every moment of her experience with breast cancer as it affected her life in general. She was waiting to have her operation that afternoon – a mastectomy – and she talked about her decision to have a reconstruction. It struck me then, as it has done ever since I began the work on breast cancer, that the level of autonomous decision making in this particular area is far higher than for patients with gynaecological conditions. This again is something that I need to work more with in terms of expression and articulation.

My first encounter set the tone for the rest of the day and indeed for the following day too. All the patients who came and went on the ward were interested in the project and generous in their willingness to be involved. All dutifully read the formal information sheet and filled out the mandatory consent forms before we were then able to have very ‘informal’ conversations.

The humour and camaraderie between the ladies themselves was uplifting. There were of course feelings of worry and even fear mixed up with the pragmatism and confidence in medical science but the strong sense of what I can only describe – perhaps a bit lamely – as ‘sisterhood’ kept, in general, trepidation just below the surface. I was accepted and it felt genuine…and warm. On the second day I attended an operation on a lady I had got to know on the ward. She was having a mastectomy and sentinel node biopsy. I will write more about this together with an account of a second operation I will be attending today, in a separate post. For now, here are some image of drawings I made on Anwen ward.

doing crochet while waiting to go to theatre

after the op

Anwen ward

after the op

waiting to go to theatre

“I am a person”

I am working on two portraits of patients at present, and I am looking forward to beginning a third when the subject – a breast surgeon – comes for her first sitting very soon. All three paintings will form part of the exhibition for the Breast Cancer – a creative intervention project where my aim is to create a relational dynamic – an ‘aesthetic tension’- between the images of the patients on one side of the gallery, and that of a member of the treatment team on the other.

The images here show the beginnings of the ‘process’, with respect to one of the ladies I am working with and who has given me full permission to use the work here. I thought they might be of interest as an insight into how I go about what I do. The piece is far from complete and this  is a form of self exposure for me, as an artist; there is so much vulnerability that lies beneath the surface of a ‘finished’ painting. But then I am asking for a similar form of disclosure from the ladies I am working with. I hope these images then will be received in the manner in which they are offered. The portrait is on a canvas four feet square.

The work on the portraits is naturally a very ‘visceral’ process. It is physically so in the sometimes forceful, sometimes gentle application of paint on canvas, the touch of bristle, the smell of the oil, and the physicality of the ‘dance’  I must continue as my arm moves across the canvas and my whole body moves back and forth. At the same time it is profoundly emotional as my thoughts and feelings while working engage in their own dance, which simultaneously evokes and provokes the reasons ‘why’ I am doing this work, which, in turn, are far more important than any intellectual parameters around ‘how’ to paint a portrait. Of course the technical aspects of the process are not insignificant, but it is the relationship with the person herself – whether she is actually there in the room or whether I am working alone from sketches, photos and responses to what she has told me  – that is the most compelling in terms of achieving a likeness beyond resemblance.

The person, the subject, and the nature of being is a crucial issue for the particular sitter whose likeness I am attempting to capture here. In her very personal words then, in her story,

I think (personhood and womanhood) they’re the same. I don’t think they can be separated out. But, womanhood changes so much. Through aging, through interpretation. And I am a person, whatever anybody else’s interpretation might be, their idea of womanhood. For me womanhood is full of integrity and strength and so is personhood. But womanhood can be stolen if you’re not careful – by your industries and your sentimentalities….and so womanhood and personhood have to look after each other I think…I was never defined by my cancer so my breast cancer hasn’t changed me..the way I see myself or my womanhood….(after mastectomy) Amazons have porridge for breakfast!