Artist: Sally Haynes
Location: Main corridor, Level 3, SDH North

‘Fragile-X-scape’ is one of a series of digital and multimedia images created by Sally Haynes during an artist’s residency across three hospitals in 2002. With unprecedented access to behind the scenes at the Radiology Dept at Southampton General Hospital, Wessex Genetics Laboratory at Salisbury District Hospital and Pathology at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport, IOW, Sally explored the creative territory shared by art and science – Sciart.

With her artistic eye, Sally was free to concentrate on the rhythm and patterns of chromosomes and translated this genetic data into the three artworks for Salisbury entitled ‘Fragile-X-scape’, ‘CAG repeats’ and ‘Matching the pairs’. The completed pieces are displayed outside the Genetics Department entrance and combine photographic and microscopic images, manipulated through computer software with Sally’s own drawing and mark making. Sally’s work in Southampton General’s Radiology Department led to images likening various radiology processes to the structure of leaves and flowers. On the Isle of Wight Sally made two large compositions using the stunning colours found in samples from the Pathology Laboratory together with annotations highlighting the medical significance of the samples.

‘Fragile-X-scape’ is typical of the artist’s creative use of medical imagery, making it possible for viewers to relate to science in a different way. Layered images and adjusted scale bring the photograph of the fragile X chromosome to the forefront of our view, with the trace line of the drawing positioned like a ghostly reflection in a darkened window looking out on lights in the landscape beyond. The poetic and slightly melancholic atmosphere of the work reflects the sensitive nature of the subject matter addressed – the mental retardation caused by the fragile X chromosome and the tracking of affected families through genetic sequencing. Using the idea of landscape and mapping as a metaphor for both the physical surface of the gene represented and the connectedness of families, gives us an alternative perspective on the scientific processes involved in this tracking.

About the artist

Sally Haynes is a Newbury based artist exhibiting several times a year at her studio at New Greenham Arts in Newbury. With an extensive background in education Sally continues to teach in various settings. She graduated from Winchester School of Art in 1995. A member of Catalyst (a group of women artists and scientists working and exhibiting together) for several years, Sally continues to address and explore a fascination with Science and Art in her work.

Sally says, “The awareness of my own cyclical patterns of behaviours, coupled with an increasing interest in portraying subjects from a different viewpoint, has led to my working with particular shapes and scale change: bringing together worlds of symbolic visual language and pattern. I often use microscopic equipment, cameras and computers as drawing tools. My work is project based and drawing underlines everything I do.”