Vital signs/art and wellness: the hospital as a mediated site

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)As photographers give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure. (Susan Sontag 1990:34) This thesis is the outcome of original inquiry that focuses on substantiating ‘Practice as Research or ‘Practice-led Research’ as a means of generating and identifying ‘authentic experience.’ The ‘space,’ as Sontag names it, is ‘the hospital;’ in particular, the hospital as a vulnerable, threatened and, ultimately, destroyed space. The theme of interacting with such an insecure space in order to record and articulate an ‘authentic experience,’ namely the experience of the staff who have worked in one hospital in particular, the Royal Newcastle Hospital (NSW), forms the foundation of this exegesis. The research is situated within the area of Arts Health and is a theoretical and, at times, personal reflection on my time as artist-in-residence at the Royal and my relationship with the staff as they prepared to leave a much loved place of work. As a photographic artist, the research was realised by using the photographic image as a primary visualising agent and, principally, the window as the prevailing encoded form. The resulting images and the process of creating them are recorded herein and have left the people of the Royal with a series of ‘imaginary possession[s] of a past’ that is now intangible in a material sense, and thus ‘unreal.’ Nevertheless, the images, some of which are now permanently housed in the new precinct, The Royal Newcastle Centre at Rankin Park, and memorialised in the first of the three portfolio books, Pathologies of Time I - Royal Newcastle Hospital, were created with the intention of working with the staff in order to contribute to their journey towards taking ‘possession’ ‘of space in which they felt ‘insecure.