An archaeology of care.
Anita Johnson creates artworks from salvaged broken objects. She reshapes familiar items to evoke experiences of separation and repair: experiences at the core of a hospital. Her work offers a different perspective on the health care provided through the Maitland Hospital over time. She was invited to participate in the exhibition A Conspicuous Object – The Maitland Hospital.
Anita Johnson’s artworks installed in the exhibition at the Maitland Regional Art Gallery, October 2021.
(Clare Hodgins)
“Built on Wonnarua land, the old Maitland Hospital is a multi-layered place of care. It’s a fascinating conglomerate of architectural styles and exudes a palpable resonance of all the people who have ever worked, studied, or recuperated there.
The artworks I have made began with objects I salvaged from the storerooms of the hospital. I have incorporated these found objects with sensory things such as the smell of cloves, the sounds of the hospital, and the soft textures of textiles. This is my response to the way that clinical places heighten all the senses, and embed themselves deep in our psyche.
In the works I focus on patients’ experiences of being cared for in the hospital, their longing for home, their desire for mobility, and the capacity for care and healing that lies in the touch of the human hand. Hospitals may be scary and foreboding places at times, but they are also places where, day-in and day-out, ordinary people care for strangers with such tenderness and empathy. It is this that makes hospitals extraordinary.”
Holding up and holding on
2020
salvaged objects, felt and cloves
163 x 48 x 15 cm
Holding up and holding on has a narrative of convalescence and expresses the feelings of longing that are experienced during illness and its isolation.
I have used some domestic objects that make reference to the family home, a yearned for personal space as opposed to the shared space of the hospital.
The other objects I have used are associated with illness and injury. The crutch is an object that would normally support the human body but here it is rendered incapable of doing so. Unable to move about freely, the crutch holds tight onto a hot-water bottle made of felted wool that is soft and furry like a mammalian body. Hot-water bottles are familiar objects of comfort and care during illness and this one I have filled with cloves. These aromatic spices are used in medicinal healing to warm the organs of the body and as a painkiller. Smells are such a strong presence in hospitals and cloves are an olfactory connection to personal memory of illness.
The title is a combination of two phrases overheard in the hospital environment. ‘How are you holding up?’ and ‘keep on holding on’.
On the cusp of a breath
2021
collected stretcher and hospital pillows, printed linen, bronze, and possum skin
188 x 48 x 32 cm
On the cusp of a breath consists of three objects lying on top of a paramedic stretcher.
In this artwork I focus on the aspect of human touch in Maitland Hospital. A hospital is a place of care and it is someone’s hand that directly distributes that care to patients. Pillows are objects of comfort and, in combining the pillow with the print of the hands, I pinpoint how comfort can also come with a touch of the hand when you are in need of care. In isolation, COVID or otherwise, we realise the importance of touch for our wellbeing. Humans need physical contact to calm their nervous system when they are stressed. Touch is healing.
The bronze object in the centre of the stretcher is a cast of the space between my two hands. It is a strange and almost human organ organic shape. This object is the intimate and invisible space of care transformed into something solid and everlasting.
I have also included some of the characteristic navy pinstripe pillows used at Maitland Hospital. For one of the pillows I have replaced the spot where a person’s head would normally rest with possum skin.
My personal experience as a patient in hospital is fortunately limited, but my father’s experience was far more long-term: 15 years in and out of hospital. I am grateful to everyone who cared for him there. The brain surgeon and the nurses, the person who mopped his floor and the person who poured him a cup of tea, the night nurse who held his hand and the person who helped him walk and talk again. While he was in hospital he always yearned to go home to the land he was from and to feel the dirt under his feet. The possum fur symbolises this longing.
Repairable
2021
collected objects, felted wool and cloves
120 x 12 x 21.5 cm
In the store cupboard of Maitland Hospital I found many objects to use in artworks. A small thing that caught my eye was this swing tag on which was written “Repairable”. While it may have once been attached to some hospital machinery or equipment, I found it as an unattached thing floating around the old hospital and it seemed to me to be asking the medical question of just who might be ‘repairable’. Who might this swing tag be attached to next?
The question of who is repairable can be a fuzzy line, determined by available medical treatments and the patient’s quality of life.
Unicycle
2021
collected objects and safety pants
166 x 37 x 27 cm
Unicycle gives voice to the frustration of being confined to bed while in hospital.
The crutch is long; even if a person could get up onto the bicycle seat their feet wouldn’t be able to touch the pedals. Furthermore the unicycle doesn’t touch the ground, it hangs in mid air.
The artwork expresses the desire for mobility and the frustration felt about being immobile.
Chair body / Body chair
2021
collected chair segment and silk
118 x 55 x 29 cm
Within my art practice I have a particular interest in objects that support or enable the human body. There are many of these types of objects in a hospital. A chair is one.
Turned on its side this chair forms the shape of a cradle. A cradle also supports the human body. The chair hangs on the wall as if it is about to catch the pink part above it.
For this part above I have sewn a delicate silk replica of all the missing lower parts of the chair. The shapes of the wooden chair become quite different in this delicate material, they collapse and appear more like human organs.
This artwork expresses how in hospital we become much more attuned to the physicality and vulnerability of our own body, and as a patient we open ourselves to the care of others to support and enable our bodies.
An archaeology of care
2021
voltimetre, photographic plates collected from Maitland Hospital, bronze cast of a lightbulb, digital print on linen, anodised wire
215 x 106 x 19 cm
sound design by Brent Williams* (2 ch audio, 14 mns)
Maitland Hospital is a richly multi-layered place that has accrued stories of people and healthcare through time since the 1840s. The buildings have gone through many changes and adaptations, it has been a teaching hospital where many nurses did their training, it has survived major floods, and been the site of care for thousands of patients.
These photographic printing plates were salvaged from the hospital. They tell various stories about this place of care across time. They are an archaeology of care.
The visual component of this artwork is accompanied by a multi-layered and looping soundscape by Brent Williams that is built upon recordings of hospital sounds.
By including the hand cushion, the ‘not to be used with a generator’ swing tag (found in the hospital) and the bronze light bulb, I suggest how machines have become central to care in the hospital over time, yet it is the human hand that is longed for during illness and injury.
*Brent Williams is a composer, musician and sound artist from Wollongong NSW. He makes electroacoustic and electronic music and multi-channel, interactive sound installations. Brent often uses manipulated field recordings at the forefront of his compositions. He has created music and sound designs for film, visual and video artists for over 25 years. Brent is also a rock musician. He has played guitar and keyboards with seminal Australian band The New Christs for 15 years.
Photographs by Bernhard Fischer.
Anita Johnson created another artwork, Bubble truck, that is now on display in the new Maitland Hospital.
First posted: 16 October 2021
Updated: 12 April 2022