Puncture | Jacki McInnes

Puncture (2018 -)

I trained as a diagnostic radiographer many years ago, long before I made a complete break from that career to become an artist. As a result, I have always been drawn to human anatomy and diagnostic techniques in my art. Previous artworks have seen me using X-ray plates to build up a ‘stained-glass’ window, while also working sculpturally with X-ray-shielding lead for many years.

Recently I have been experimenting with ways of making art from acupuncture needles – something that has become particularly apt in this current time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The sheer, steeliness of the needles is undeniably threatening but is also sinuously beautiful, especially when massed and following a familiar line over the page.

My three Hangover works play with that most ubiquitous of experiences, the splitting headache and although these works were made in 2018, this symptom now has a particularly sinister resonance. The works propose a little bit of fear and a bit of repugnance, but also a bit of humour.

Spine (Landscape) is less obvious and it is my intention that this work should talk to the pathology of our contemporary, troubled world as much as to our own human frailties.