Latest
How healthcare practitioners can learn from studying art: spotlight on Mark Quinn and Alison Lapper
In September 2005, a 3.5m high, 13 tonne statue was unveiled atop the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. The statue is a beautiful, strong, proud, naked, pregnant woman. She has no arms, and her legs are shortened. She is smooth and white, carved from marble.
The woman is Alison Lapper, an artist who spent her childhood in an institution for disabled children after her mother was advised from medics that she should forget about her daughter. When pregnant herself Alison received admonitions from family, strangers and professionals about having a child due to her perceived disabilities. Despite this, she pursued independence and carved out a career in art as well as becoming a mother.
The artwork is fascinating to study as it challenges many expectations and assumptions in our society and within health and social care.
The statue is in a style inspired by ancient Greek marbles, where figures posed naked in strong, heroic stances, showing off their physical prowess. This was art that created idealised visions of beauty. Over time, these ancient statues have sometimes lost limbs, creating body images that have come to be accepted and normalised within this artistic context. At first glance, the statue of Alison Lapper can be viewed with the same lens, her arms appear to be ‘missing’. Because of the white marble and the familiar style, at first look perhaps this isn’t questioned. However, Alison Lapper isn’t missing anything – she is her whole self, this is her. Quinn commented: “It was interesting to me to see what is acceptable in art, but unacceptable in life”. This should make us question preconceptions about how we view disabled bodies – what is normal, complete and whole for one person, isn’t universal.
The statue is on a plinth. For many disabled people in the public eye, especially wheelchair users, they are in a physically lower position than mobile people, meaning that they are literally looked down upon. The sculpture places Alison Lapper in an elevated position, where we look upwards at her, and she is bigger than us. This is a powerful reversal of situations.
The statue is unashamedly naked. Proudly disabled and naked. This isn’t a representation of disabled bodies that is often shown in public, let alone shouted about from the top of a plinth. The viewer can form their own judgements, question their own subconscious assumptions and respond to their own internal prejudices. The nakedness and the swollen belly remind us of her sexuality, her fertility, and her role as a mother and caregiver. In her own work, Lapper has photographed herself naked, challenging perceptions of beauty and disability. For healthcare workers, medics, social workers, and general society, this is an important reminder – that being born with a different body doesn’t stop people from having natural human urges, needs and dreams, and shouldn’t stop them from achieving these. Individuals with disabilities shouldn’t be assumed to be always in the role of cared-for; they may be caregivers themselves. Identities are unique and complex.
Studying artworks such as this can benefit health and social care professionals through creating conversations around assumptions of disability, opening up their own potential biases around disability, and considering the portrayal of disabled bodies in the public eye, and the relationship that this has with identity.
Lorna Sankey has a Foundation degree in Fine Art, a BSc in Art History & Literature, and an MSc in Occupational Therapy. She has worked clinically in a variety of health and social care settings, and is currently working as a Research Associate at the University of East Anglia on studies regarding retention of pre and post registration nurses. Lorna has an interest in the role of art, art history and literature within healthcare education, particularly regarding the deeper understanding that the humanities can bring to health studies, and the role that the humanities play in shaping societies assumptions and perspectives of disability and identity.
References:
http://marcquinn.com/artworks/the-complete-marbles
Millett-Gallant, A. (2010) The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art. Palgrave Macmillan.
Saner, E. (2014) Interview, Alison Lapper: ‘Disabled people are looked at as a drain on society, and I’m certainly not that’. The Guardian.
- In the Company of Monsters: New Visions, Ancient MythsFree exhibition 23 September 2023 – 24 February 2024 Reading Museum ‘Stare Long into the Abyss (Marsyas)’ by Eleanor Crook ‘Circe’ by Paul Reid In the Company of Monsters: New Visions, Ancient Myths will be an exhibition of the works of the contemporary artists Eleanor Crook and Paul... Read more »
- Ensuring confidence and accuracy in COVID testing through effective instructionsJosefina Bravo and Sue Walker Since December 2020, the approach to testing for COVID in the UK has shifted from self-administered home testing to mass testing in community sites. This means that going forward, an ever-expanding number of people will be training to deliver testing at their place... Read more »
- Coping with chronic conditions during coronavirus: A historical perspectiveNot everyone can afford to be anxious about Coronavirus – some are more concerned about managing their long-term ailments. Amie Bolissian provides a historical perspective on this tendency, drawing on her Wellcome Trust-funded research on older people’s illness experiences in early modern England. An old woman falling asleep over reading... Read more »
- Home & Alone: A historical perspective on self-isolation during coronavirus by Hannah NewtonCo-Director of the Centre for Health Humanities, Dr Hannah Newton, draws on 17th-century plague accounts to offer insights into the emotional impact of self-isolation Yesterday, the British government announced its policy for slowing down the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) infection: ‘if you think you have symptoms’ of this disease, ‘stay at home... Read more »
- Architecture of Pharmacies – Co-designing Pharmacy SpacesDr Ranjita Dhital, Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice (University of Reading), Principal Investigator of ‘Architecture of Pharmacies – Co-designing Pharmacy Spaces’: Pharmacy Research UK Leverhulme Fellowship (2018-2020), £44,972. Pharmacy, Damien Hurst (Tate Modern) Architecture of Pharmacies is an interdisciplinary arts-based research project which aims to understand how the physical and social spaces within... Read more »
- Luigi Groto: A blind author and prophet in sixteenth-century Italy, by Laura CarnelosDr Laura Carnelos, Collections Research Assistant in Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading, draws on her postdoctoral work at the University of Venice to illuminate the experience of a famous blind author, Luigi Groto Luigi Groto (1541-1585), also known as the cieco d’Adria, was the most famous blind author of sixteenth-century... Read more »
- Call for Participants: Global Health Humanities WorkshopThis workshop, organised by Dr Rohan Deb Roy (co-director of the University of Reading’s Centre for Health Humanities), examines how biomedicine was received, reinterpreted and transformed in the non-western world in the twentieth century. Through case studies focussing on India, Palestine, China and Africa, it traces the various ways in which... Read more »
- Facial Prejudice: the Last Taboo? By Marjorie GehrhardtDr Marjorie Gehrhardt, lecturer in 20th century French history, tells us about a recent event she organised on experiences and representations of facial differences. From The Phantom of the Opera to James Bond villains and The Undateables, visible facial differences are still overwhelmingly presented as signs of moral or intellectual flaws. On... Read more »
- Workshop on the fabric of the human bodyOn the 7 and 8 November, the Centre for Health Humanities teamed up the University’s Arts Strategy, and was supported generously by the Heritage and Creativity Institute for Collections, in its running of a special workshop ‘On the fabric of the human body’. The event was organised around two gems... Read more »
- Call for Papers: Disease & Ease, 1500-1800University of Reading Conference, 1-2 July 2020 [Please note that the original dates for this conference were 3-4 July 2019, but one of the conference organisers has since found out she is expecting a baby, and will be on maternity leave in the summer of 2019, hence the new dates] ‘O... Read more »