Lea Clatworthy

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

A Blunt Instrument

Through my work, I confront my experience as a midwife, specifically my complicity in inflicting pain to my patients and my subsequent attempt to mend myself. It is about the obstetric violence inherent to the institution of the hospital space while grappling with the notion of the sacred. I was the blunt instrument. The rusted metal tools of my trade around me – rusty trolleys, squeaky wheels, old blood long since dried and sterilized on blunt tools; these were the things that reminded me that I too, was a blunt instrument. 

Sometimes I felt like a butcher, hacking through flesh with blunt scissors. My bones felt rusty, squeaking and trembling and sometimes failing me, the soft butcher. I treat the metal sheets in my work as if they are bodies: inflicting trauma to the surface, then soothing it. First mangling, then placating the material. This is where I explore trauma in its most brutal, basic form. And where I begin to heal by healing outside of myself. The materials I use evoke the language of the labour ward: the hospital bed, the metal, the curtains, the gauze, the pads. All used in the process of inflicting and healing the damage done. Rust in this work denotes the decay and corruption of the institution. Rust and blood share the same fundamental compound: iron. A small blood clot stuck in the hinge of a pair of scissors becomes rust after being cleaned poorly. Blood and rust, decay and life, are interchangeable in this work. The rust created on the metal in the formation of a blood splatter, nods to the violence of the experience of birth in the institution. 

Bones are woven into the metal to remind us that these are bodies and that they are sacred. Our bones, like clay, are soft and malleable when we are born. As we grow, they grow. As we age, they age. They harden as we do and crack as we do and when we die, they are what remains. This is a totem, a monolith, a lighting rod. The pillar is architecturally associated with sacred spaces like cathedrals. Cathedrals are as delicate as they are indomitable – the space inside a cathedral is like a womb. So much damage can occur and so much life. This pillar is a totem to that experience. Our hollow, hallowed bones. It is a monument of healing to all who move through the space and a reminder of our simultaneous strength and fragility.