Artefacts after Burning series

Exhibited in: The Alternative Archive – Only Hospital For Miles Miles exhibition at the Lake Grace Regional Artspace

Dimensions: variable (see below for details)

Artist Statement:

Accumulation of rubbish immediately outside Hospital boundary fence needed collecting and removal.

Hospital Inspection report, 6th June, 1946.

Rubbish is definitely not thrown over the fence and the remaining small accumulation seen by Matron Bottle was deposited there many years ago and is being gathered up and disposed of as opportunity permits. 

Lake Grace Hospital Board, 5th August 1946

All human waste was … carted away to eastern [western] part of the lake near the causeway.

Ailsa McDonald nee Meston, nurse 1941-43, correspondence 2003

Some years ago, I found the remains of a nurse’s pocket watch while walking in the bush near the old hospital. Close by, under shrubs and leaf litter, there are charcoal scatters marking places where hospital waste was dumped, burnt and raked over. Soil burns on the west bank of Lake Grace and plough lines at the old tip east of town hide other dump sites.

I found fragments of ampoules and phials, heavy old glass and china, pipettes and test tubes, safety pins, a nurses’ button, a suture needle. I surveyed and catalogued the finds and re-made them using soil, ash, charcoal and/or salt from each dump site to bind and ground.

Photograph: Rebecca Clark

Source: Ailsa McDonald nee Meston, personal correspondence 2003; State Records Office of Western Australia, AU WA S268- cons1003 1945/0396.

Mapped – Artefacts after Burning

Media/materials: Objects recovered from old hospital tip/burn sites (glass, metal, china, bone, plastic), wire.

Dimensions: variable

Ampoules – Artefacts after Burning series

Media/materials: Objects recovered from old hospital tip/burn sites (glass, metal, china, bone), soil, ash, charcoal and salt from sites, PVA

Dimensions: 300mm x 900mm

Phials – Artefacts after Burning series

Media/materials: Objects recovered from old hospital tip/burn sites (glass, metal, china, bone), soil, ash, charcoal and salt from sites, PVA

Dimensions: 300mm x 900mm

Re-made – Artefacts after Burning series

Media/materials: Objects recovered from old hospital tip/burn sites (glass, metal, china, bone), soil, ash, charcoal and salt from sites, PVA

Dimensions: 300mm x 900mm