About the project


About the project

This blog documents the first phase of a collaborative visual arts project between artist Emma Hunter, Dr Philip Kilner of the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Unit at Royal Brompton hospital (part of Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust) and rb&hArts – the Trust’s charitable arts programme.

The project will focus on water-flow properties inherent in the structures and dynamics of the human heart and blood system.

This first phase, funded by the Wellcome Trust and devoted to research and development, will include workshops with medical students and with patients of the Trust, as well as the exchange of images and words you will see developing below. The outcome will be a series of works of art which poetically re-imagine the inner landscape of the human body. We hope it will invite audiences to make visual connections between our inner and outer landscapes; the micro and macro, and to consider the biomedical and ecological implications of these connections.

We aim to produce a catalogue to accompany a tour of this work in 2014, before it is hung permanently at Royal Brompton Hospital in London.


Tuesday 5 November 2013

Workshop: Drawing flow 'out there' and 'in here'

 
at Water: Nature's Mediator Conference, Emerson College, 1st November 2013
 
This practical workshop took the form of three parts, firstly participants watched a demonstration of suminagashi and then made some of their own suminagashi prints. Secondly trays were filled with water, ink and mica dust to reveal the flow form patterns occurring within the body of water when it was disturbed by, for example, running a paintbrush through it. Drawings were made 'blind' in response to the patterns forming, participants were asked to use only their fingers dipped in graphite dust to mimic with drawn gesture some of the forms taking place in the water. The final part consisted of a meditation using simple mindfulness techniques to bring people into connection with a sense of the heart beat, rhythm, pulse and flow occurring within their own bodies. This was immediately followed by a drawing exercise which attempted to capture the essence of what participants experienced.
 
Demonstration of Suminagashi Technique
 
One of the participant's suminagashi before laying the paper on the water

Example of suminagashi
Example of suminagashi
Drawings being made in response to water patterns revealed by the mica dust


Drawings being made in response to water patterns revealed by the mica dust


Discussion around drawn responses to the mica dust experiments

Responses to the meditation on flow occurring within the body


 

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