Presents
Medical Heirlooms / Tamsin van Essen
The jars become containers for disease, rather than holding the cure.
Inspired by contemporary society’s obsession with perfection and beauty, and the concomitant fear of perceived ‘abnormalities’, this project explores diseases and medical conditions through the manipulation of ceramic objects. Illness and disease form part of our history, but because of the attached stigma there is a tendency to hide evidence of ill health, rather than accepting it as part of everyday experience.
I have been working the ceramic material in a way that emulates physiological processes, deliberately encouraging ‘faults’, ‘defects’ and ‘blemishes.’ These features add visual and tactual interest to the vessels, and are intended to mirror the interest and individuality added to a person’s appearance by scars, flaws or deformities from medical conditions (their health legacy).
Based on 17th-18th century apothecary jars, the forms have strong historical and medical links, as well as providing the metaphor of vessel as body. The jars become containers for disease, rather than holding the cure. As family heirlooms, the jars can be passed down through generations in the same way as the hereditary medical conditions.
