Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Eastbourne District General Hospital, Eastbourne
19 February – 25 March
Reviewed by: Colette Meacher
Stalking the wards of Eastbourne Hospital recently was someone on an extraordinary mission: the artist Anna Dumitriu, wearing a lab coat embroidered with bacteria. Yes, bacteria. Mostly, bacteria don’t make us go “mmmm...”, especially not when sat in a hospital waiting room. We normally equate bacteria with germs, though most are not only harmless, but also perfectly necessary.
Dumitriu hopes to help bacteria recover from this apparent identity crisis, having spent a year exploring the “communications hum” that permanently reverberates between the bacteria of human, animal and plant life. She sent hospital staff home with petri dishes and an instruction to swab sample microbes at will; gathered from amongst a cat bowl, oven glove, doormat and warm wet cheese, they were later developed in microbiology labs to create artworks ranging from an embroidered chair and crocheted bedspread to mobile phone wallpapers and a sound installation.
It’s surprising that Dumitriu’s sporulating, sublime world of bacteria disappoints, given her substantial research. Work was sited without thought: digital prints of wood, bread and chocolate flora hung loosely in a narrow, dark and disused corridor housing the payphones; further work was discovered in the central foyer, and a series of small zinc plate etchings were tucked away elsewhere in an inaccessible radiology waiting room. The 3D work was nowhere to be seen nor was there any indication of where it might be.
The show thus failed to make an impact on its environment, fading into the walls rather than being the source of any aesthetic experience for a potentially captive audience in the huge gallery space that the modern hospital represents. Both in the presentation of the work and its visual content, there was an awkward sense of missed opportunity and of work that didn’t function to communicate; the underlying theoretical ideas finally more substantial than the sporadic, unrevealing images themselves.
Writer detail:
Colette Meacher is Editor of Latest Art Magazine and a freelance writer. www.latest-art.co.uk
colettemeacher@gmail.com |
latest-art.co.uk
Venue detail:
Eastbourne District General Hospital
Kings Drive, Eastbourne BN21 2UD
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