What Lies Behind
This collection of work was inspired by the University of Dundee Archives and developed for their 2022 exhibition Tales of the Unexpected held in the Lamb Gallery. What Lies Behind is a wall hanging made of a cyanotype produced onto Scottish linen. This is accompanied by WOMAN THROWS HERSELF FROM A WINDOW., a diptych of cyanotype and laser etching on Fabriano.
After a morning immersed in the large tome, Case Book No. 38 (Dundee Female Lunatic Asylum 1893, No. 5133 to No. 5482, From 25 August 1893 to 12 September 1895), something emerged in my periphery. A pattern repeated and remained constant. The whirling Gothic floral forms appliqued onto the Victorian wall hanging reached out towards me from behind the figures positioned in front.
The use of cyanotype, a photographic practice, is a gesture towards the photo documentation as an integral and yet invasive aspect of the medical intake process. The surface, a base material of Scottish linen from the last Scottish linen mill (now since closed in 2021), weaves in the daily experiences of many of the female patients and their roles as millworkers in Dundee.
The pattern has become more than a background to their stories; it has a resonance – it is a presence in and of itself.
The morning after I read this short newspaper article pasted into the asylum casebook during my visit to the archives, I walked through the city centre and made a visit to the site of the accident on Foundry Lane, close to the harbour in Dundee. As I stood looking down the narrow-cobbled road, an image developed in my mind – my right hand reaches out toward hers, to hold her, to catch her, to break her fall.
threw herself
Saturday evening
second storey window
clothes off
suddenly
before
she could be restrained
threw herself
to the street
below
right arm frac t u red
right wrist dis located
head seriously injured
removal to Infirmary
last night she was
progressing favourably.
