'Lost for Words' - portraying dementia

Lost for Words

Because of its nature and its stripping away of language, dementia blocks attempts to describe its internal experience. My work is an attempt to enter the silent darkness and convey the effects of dementia.
In 2012, my mother was diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia, a neurodegenerative disease. The parts of her frontal and temporal lobes that controlled her speech and word recognition were most affected. Since diagnosis, the dementia, like a rubber, has been gradually erasing her interests, empathy, personality, reasoning and decision-making. Communication is disappearing. Now, I watch her mind, her language and her identity slipping away.
The finished pieces are five vitrines, each embodying the person, and containing representations of dementia, focusing on speech loss. Their title is 'Lost for Words'.

This work was exhibited at Alzheimer's Research UK's National Research Conference at Harrogate Convention Centre in March 2019 and at the associated public talks.

In 2018 this work was exhibited at 'Mapping the Human Brain', curated by Art.Number23 at the Old Biscuit Factory, London and at the Heads and Tails exhibition 'Art & Liberation', at the Holy Biscuit, Newcastle.

Created using a range of mixed media: memory tubing, extruded plastic, wires from inside communication cabling, wool and acrylic.

Official photograph from Alzheimer's Research UK National Research Conference 2019

CLICK on the gallery photo for a short video of the exhibition.

Extruded white plastic continuous handwritten text ‘I am unravelling, I am losing myself, …I am losing…’. Internal wires from telephone handset cable rolled and knotted like an unexploded bomb.

Memory tubing and telephone cable wires. Damage to Broca’s Area (speech production) and Wernicke’s Area (word recognition)

Photo credit: Ed Poxon

Memory tubing and computer monitor wires.

Black extruded plastic, frayed wool. Synapses and tangles.

Black and grey internal wires from domestic electrical cable, brown wire delineates the area of damage - broken connections and frayed, shorted wires. Official photograph from Alzheimer's Research UK National Research Conference 2019.

Photo credit: Ed Poxon