India Steggall
Fine Art
Final year project
The Under-represented Fragility of The Body [Read more]
Somber
This painting portrays my own feelings of isolation during the scan and consulting stages of the breast cancer ward. How I felt separate from the other women around me due to my young age. This body position represents the way in which you lift and move around your arms for consultants to find and feel tumours and lymph nodes in your breasts and underarms, and I have chosen to be kneeling to convey the begging that began in my mind that I would be okay.
Mammogram
After experimenting with thermal cameras to see the tumours in the same way that the surgeons would, I found that you can see the differences in tissue similar to a mammogram. This piece uses a thermal photograph to overlay one of my self-portraits. The edit helps us to see illness that is invisible to the naked eye. I have chosen to depict myself sitting on the edge of my bed at night due to the nature of this occurring regularly as sleep became so disrupted. The harsh red lighting from my bedside lamp was exaggerated to look red as I felt that my life was constantly in danger until the tumour is removed.
Careful and Fragile.
Despite many people feeling strong in themselves, physical and mental illness can shatter people's lives in an instant. This piece shows that working on a glass painting can be compared to working on yourself and how at any instant this can be broken. You can piece it all back together, but it will never be the same.
Where the Scars Will Lie
Body or Soul?
Tumours
Thermal
How many Tumours?
India Steggall
A diverse multi-media artist with a particular passion for painting. My Fine Art career has seen my focus change from material experimentation and activism art to a personal documentation of health.
My work reflects my personal experience with illness - more specifically the fragility of the body. Through my work, I am attempting to evoke a range of emotions within the audience and promote the idea of not judging somebody based upon what they see at surface level. Furthermore, my overriding aim is to bring awareness to the message of 'body fragility' through my varied artwork and techniques.
In terms of my skill set, I have been able to refine my self-portraiture work, as well as experimenting with a variety of new techniques and equipment. Overall, I feel that I have either learnt and enhanced a host of techniques, whilst utilising the vast resources at Loughborough University - both inside and outside the Fine Art Department. With special thanks to the Ergonomics centre and the Design Body Scanner team who gave me the opportunity to work with very expensive equipment in their spare time.
I feel as though the next chapter of my life after graduating will have many possibilities due to the range of skills that I have learnt during my degree. My career aims are within event design, management and marketing after working alongside my degree in events and decoration.
I hope to continue with my artwork in my spare time, through commission work and in my day-to-day work also.
Final year project
The Under-represented Fragility of The Body