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Aesthetics of Prosthetics
Nicola Lane

YOTA Residency April /May 2001

The initial idea was that I should work with a small group of users [users like myself of prostheses] to ‘identify and explore the issues involved in the aesthetics, production and use of prosthetics’. In my pieces funded by the Douglas Bader Foundation, I had worked hard to discover images that accurately expressed my personal experience of disability. By sharing this process with the group I hoped to facilitate the discovery of images that express their experience. This collaborative journey of discovery would then feed into and inform the final piece/pieces that I would create for the adorn, equip exhibition.

The Residency [and the journey that followed]

My accident happened more than thirty years ago, but I still find it difficult and disturbing to explore this experience in my work. So I was not surprised when, at the first meeting, some of the users expressed anger, pain, and anxiety. I knew that to survive the personal demands of the project, members of the group must be strongly motivated. Two finally committed themselves; Steve Wilkes, a keen photographer, and Carol Warren, who draws and paints for her own pleasure.

We decided to bypass pain and loss by concentrating on gathering information about the craft and technology of prosthetics. In this we were greatly helped by Ozan Altay, one of the Centre’s prosthetists, who became involved in the residency. We agreed to structure our research by visiting:

  1. The Science Museum’s collection of prosthetics.
  2. Blatchford’s factory in Basingstoke; leading manufacturer of components for lower limb prostheses.
  3. R.S.L. Steeper at Roehampton; research/manufacture of silicon ‘cosmesis’.

Steve agreed to photographically document the project, and Carol to write about her feelings. At that early stage she could not imagine exploring her disability through drawing and painting, but this was to change.

Visit to Science Museum 9 May 2001

I arranged for filmmaker Tony Dowmunt to film our visit, and prosthetist Ozan Altay also came. In the Museum’s stores is their ‘Orthopaedic Collection’, and we saw its amazing variety of prostheses, including Pre-N.H.S. bespoke individualised limbs, N.H.S. experiments in electronically powered limbs for Thalidomide children; 19th Century articulated steel and brass, and best of all, a collection of photographs, taken by an Edwardian prosthetist/orthotist of his clients wearing their appliances. The time is estimated to be 1906, and all appear (with one or two exceptions) to have been photographed in the same room, with a painted backdrop and a patterned floor.

Visit to Blatchford’s 31 May 2001

The Marketing Manager took us on an in depth tour of all the production processes; like the mixing process for achieving that unique N.H.S. flesh tint, etc. We were allowed to visit the silicon cosmesis workshops, where the silicon comes in a range of skin tones. This visit revealed the issues behind NHS provision of prostheses; limited budgets require mass-production, the opposite of bespoke.

Visit to R.S.L. Steeper at Queen Mary’s, Roehampton 1 June 2001

For me this is the most significant visit of all; my first Limb Fitting Centre, where I was fitted for my first leg, where aged nineteen I learnt to walk in the Walking School. We were shown the workshop, with its rows of old wooden workbenches. There used to be over 500 craftsmen here; now only a fraction remain, and in three years most will have retired. They are amongst the last practitioners of the old craft skills of wood carving, metal beating, and leather working. We were taken to the Silicon Workshops.It is immaculate and air-conditioned, with ‘daylight’ strip lighting. We see plaster casts of hands and feet, paint brushes and pots of poster paint. With these the Main Man mixes up a ‘portrait’ of a skin tone; like the exact tone of your knuckles and the underside of your wrist. These subtle tones are reproduced in high-grade silicon, with wrinkles, veins, freckles and even hairs. This is the “bespoke” end of silicon cosmesis, with each piece costing thousands of pounds.

The Limb Fitting Centre

A crucial part of our project was the exploration of the Centre and interaction with
those who work there. As a user of prosthetics you will attend a LFC for the rest of your life, and prosthetists are as important to you as your family. Patients usually only experience the Fitting Room and the route to the doctor. So we explored and photographed workshops, the plaster room, the store of abandoned limbs,etc.

Carol, her husband Fred, and I acted as Steve’s assistants, and helped him to create improvised photographic studios in the Gym and Fitting Rooms. The Occupational Therapist and other members of staff were keen to raise awareness of psychological issues, and the Manager said she would welcome the residency’s work as valuable feedback for the clinicians. Prosthetist Ozan Altay joined the project to help communicate the complexities of providing prosthetics.

The Group and its Issues

Carol revealed that she can’t bear to look at fashion magazines. We called this loss and longing ‘Can’t Have’. She wants a leg that looks as ‘real’ as possible, and prefers NHS Flesh to wood, metal, leather or exposed mechanisms. This is the same for most of the younger women users. Her objective was to communicate the realities of losing a leg and her struggles with feeling ‘cut off’ from expressing her femininity.

In contrast, Steve hates the look of “ NHS Flesh”. In warm weather he removes the foam flesh ‘cosmetic cover’ from his leg, and exposes its metal armature. His objective was to help create awareness about the issues involved in prosthetics. For example, two of the important issues that emerged from our research were the role of money and the lessons to be learnt from the ‘old’ technologies of metal, leather and wood. One of our group objectives was to communicate the vulnerability of our exposure in the Fitting Room.

Images Created During the Residency

At our first meeting one of the group said they wanted to put nails in the Consultant’s shoes and make him walk up and down. So I made The Consultant’s Shoes [nails and brogues].

Ozan Altay demonstrated the craft of taking a cast from a patient, which was filmed by Tony Dowmunt. I wanted to reveal the parallels between the art and craft of prosthetics and my own art practice; and to communicate how challenging it is to make a socket that fits. Plaster and plaster bandage are the humble materials at the core of this process. I made “The Prosthetist’s Shoes” and “Some Day My Prosthetist Will Come” from these materials.

Carol used the difficult issue of shoes as the basis for her three paintings, the “Can’t Have” triptych. She also wrote two pieces of text, the first describing the loss of her leg, the second the feelings expressed by her three paintings.

Steve photographed a marvellous photographic narrative of the Residency, portraits of prostheses, and many other images exploring issues around prosthetics.

These and other images arising from the Residency were exhibited in the LFC.

Conclusions

Our attitudes to ourselves as users, to our Clinicians and to our providers, were profoundly affected by our interactions with the world of prosthetics, whether museum collection, factories, or Limb Fitting Centre. I feel that this process helped the group to creatively deal with painful experiences.

“Beautiful Pictures”

A huge amount of material was amassed during the Residency. But of all the fascinating things we saw during our researches, the Science Museum’s photographs were the most powerfully affecting. Almost a hundred years separate us, 21st century users of prosthetics, from our Edwardian counterparts; but shared experience puts us there, in that room with the painted backdrop and the patterned floor. The men’s gaze is unselfconscious, as if they are allowed to be disabled and wear artificial limbs; whereas the women avert their gaze, hide their faces, concealing what may be a shameful identity as a wearer of a prosthesis. A seated woman hides her face with a magazine that reads:”Beautiful Pictures for Our Readers.”

Was this deliberate? Great care has been taken to conceal their real legs with aesthetically draped and pinned skirts In my YOTA group, a male participant prefers to wear his prosthesis without its cover, exposing its metal armature. But Carol had written: “I couldn’t come to terms with the appearance of my artificial leg. I had never worn or wanted to wear long clothes. I would not read magazines or catalogues. I don’t like going shopping, so I hide in trousers.” These may be Edwardian images, but their aesthetic reveals issues that are still happening in contemporary body politics.

The Museum gave me permission to use a selection of these images as part of my exhibition piece. I chose to digitally remove the prostheses from these photographs, and to display them separately in the format that designers of product catalogues describe as ‘Limbo’. I also chose a selection of limbs from the Orthopaedic Collection that to me represented fascinating design solutions to the age-old aesthetic problem of Form v. Function. These were photographed by the Museum’s photographer, and art-directed by me. Again I wanted a catalogue format: lusciously lit and floating on a brilliantly coloured background. The Jaipur foot and an example of high-grade silicon cosmesis completed my installation.

Photography: Steve Wilkes

© The City Gallery, Leicester and the artists: 2001

This site was built by Ju Gosling aka ju90 during an artist's residency at Oriel 31 in November 2001

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