The stark entrance of the downstairs basement, the long corridor with clinical white light shadowing the floor from adjacent rooms. The history steeped in the walls of this 19th-century veterinary teaching hospital, Summerhall, Edinburgh, the exhibition ’Foreign Objects’ by artist Rowan Walker, as a part of ‘FORM: A season of exhibitions by female contemporary sculptors’ captured our attention.

Foreign Objects, is a myriad of sculptures, a poetry of patient experience, through illness, through pain, through body.

Although we have come far from the early years of medicine, we still, in the West have more to learn in terms of the relationship between, body, pain and holistic forms of treating illness and their sometimes, hidden ambiguous symptoms. Artist Rowan Walker demonstrates throughout this exhibition and in the details of the installations, comprised of multimedia, sculpture, and digital works, the intersection of mind and matter. Exploring the relationship to aesthetics of modern medicine in which is often associated with pain, illness and deep personal memories. The setting of medicine and the visceral effects this has on the body, through the cold, and sterile environments, is reflected throughout this exhibition and I felt as though I was going to be interrogated about the legitimacy of my symptoms (which is not an unfamiliar experience for those of us who are illness sufferers, boy have I been there, under similar florescent tubes.).

Before I had even taken in the sculptures, the setting within the basement had already set a precedent. 

I continue further into the exhibition and I am struck by a few individual pieces of work: Fallibility II and In-Side-out. 

Hanging on a steel bracket, Fallibility II grabs my attention. 

Walker describes this work as a ‘direct translation of a physical feeling I had during a short period of illness.’ The silicone doily represents the fragility of, what would be traditional lace, skin, hanging by a thread (of course not an actual thread, but would be a great analogy). The idea of this being a piece of flesh, the skin of a person, hanging, vulnerable, suspended for everyone to see, I felt a real depiction of baring your sick self. Such a wonderfully executed concept. What comes to mind, when I see this piece is what is written on the skin of illness, scars, bruising, rashes, perhaps the pale or discolouration that can be a result of certain illnesses, being as beautiful and as fragile as lace. The doily is used for ornamental purposes, but are also used to protect surfaces they are spread over. Maybe the doily skin in this artwork is a protective layer, to adorn the wounds of illness. A covering protective layer.

In-Side-Out also caught my eye, the touches of details around the exhibition are delightfully validating through the choice of colours, and materials and in this piece, the extra details of the small medical tools made from silicone trapped inside the glass tube. Underneath hang make-shift hospital wristbands, made from faux blue leather. Blue, as Walker has punctuated around the exhibition, is a colour associated with medical environments, blue also being the colour of ‘calm’, but this seems like a contraction and but none-the-less a valiant effort the colour blue makes. These wristbands are a tag of identification of a patient, although, here they are anonymous. 

Both demonstrated a detail of the patient experience which for me instantly drew me in as an unfortunate frequenter to hospitals, in which I can weirdly say I’ve landmarked every hospital in Glasgow (excluding private hospitals), and can say the aesthetics come back to me.

I feel those feelings, I feel myself withering as I remember all too well, both my own experiences as a chronic illness sufferer and those memories I carry attending with loved ones. After travelling daily to visit my partner for a month and then my father for two weeks in 2023 in the hospital, I noticed this bodily response, a repulsion in the reaction to this physical space, I remember, the panic of entering the doors to the land in which so much control is lost. 

‘My own memories of hospitals are too entangled with love, guilt and confusion, with trying to care for someone, caring in the right way, to allow this to become a medical interest, one of detailed rights and wrongs, do’s and don’ts.’ Jessica Gaitan Johannesson, ‘The Nerves and Their Endings’ p.75

These words come to mind:

Stone

White

Anti –

          Bacterial

Bleach

Clinical

Discharge / discard 

Throughout the exhibition, there is a real strength in materiality and although harsh in sharp metal shapes there is also a fragility that surrounds the work. 

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We highly recommend visiting this exhibition – as well as the other exhibition a part of ‘FORM: A season of exhibitions by female contemporary sculptors’ exhibited at Summerhall.

https://www.summerhallarts.co.uk/event/foreign-objects/

Opening times:

Wednesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm,

1st of December 2023 – 25th of February 2024.

Summerhall, Newington,

Edinburgh EH9 1PL

Artist Bio

Rowan Walker is a multimedia artist, based in Glasgow, who specialises in examinations of the human body. Growing up with parents who worked in biological science, the influence of the clinical can be seen throughout her work that investigates how matters of the mind interact with and relate to our physical forms, specifically in terms of pain and illness. She juxtaposes the contradictory senses of attraction and repulsion with her work in order to foster questions of our relation to our physical existence. Walker received her MA in Fine Art from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2023. Her work has been included in the exhibitions In Sight and Did you miss me? at the Edinburgh College of Art, Late at Tate, Shawanda Corbett Art Now at Tate Britain, and ECA/SCF Showcase at The Arts Bridge in Shanghai.

@/rowanewalker

Written by Eliza Coulson