A conversation between the artist and the doctor about death
2007
all works © Lisa Peachey 2015
Transparent grey wall vinyl.
500cm x 20cm
Often the first thing that is made is not the thing that ends up being the work.
The piece was initially a film where an actor was invited to play out a series of possible deaths in front of a camera, in
a studio. The silent film considered the idea of a perfect fiction, with death as the ultimate example – noone being able to tell the tale, to corroborate the representation.
An actor, Grant Gillespie, played his finest swan song at the start of his career, rather than at the end. Acting on his own, the actor seemed to be continually overcome by gravity almost in a dance with death over the control of his own body.
After making the film, it was then posted to a friend who is
a doctor, and a telephone conversation ensued about the validity of the acting, initially in order to make the film piece more convincing. It was this conversation that eventually became the basis for the work - the discussion about
the visual experience of death between a medical practicitioner versus a creative. Each line of text was laid
on top of the previous, obliterating the clarity of the last.
The whole was predominantly unreadable - the fiction
of the piece endured.
