Pathology 2021.
On 7 June 2021 photographer Catharine Neilson spent time in Maitland Hospital’s Pathology Department. Her task was to create a visual record of the Pathology Department at work. It was a part of her broader project to picture Maitland Hospital during the last year of its operation on the old High Street site.
The Pathology Department was located on Level 4 of what was known as Building I. The building was constructed in the 1940s and was subsequently adapted as different or revitalised services and functions were added or were relocated from elsewhere in the hospital.
To see photograph titles, hover over the images.
Pathology blood testing bay
A blood testing bay was attached to the Addison Clinic. Here patients, young and old, had blood tests. Strips of brown paper down a door and part of a wall had signatures and messages from and about infants and children who had blood tests.
Elsie Randall, The story of kinship.
Elsie Randall’s work was reproduced as a print as part of NSW Health Pathology’s ‘commitment to closing the healthcare gap by making… services culturally safer and more welcoming for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’.
The text panel explains the significance of the imagery in the artwork.
The work was on the wall in the Pathology blood testing bay.
Pathology staff at work
Spaces, equipment and details
Like most departments in the old Maitland Hospital, Pathology adapted spaces previously used for different purposes. In this case, the prior use was as a maternity ward. This explains some of the bathroom features (hand dryers hung long on the wall and bidets) and the occasional awkwardness of the spaces that were designed for different uses. At times, the aging fabric and design are also evident. Modern pathology equipment and processes were housed and used in these areas evocative of past uses.
Catharine Neilson was drawn to this juxtaposition of new equipment and processes in adapted spaces, and to the ways in which details - a sign here, a piece of equipment there, a still life of unexpected objects - convey a sense of how Pathology functioned on the old hospital site.
The photographs below are in the sequence in which Catharine took them.
