Capturing and Holding the Invisible: gestation and grief framed through ultrasound and MRI images
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal College of Art
Department Name: School of Art and Humanities
Abstract
This PhD is an artist's investigation of illness and how it is experienced and understood and brings a new visual narrative and knowledge to the clinical setting. It focuses on the heart, and specifically questions how women understand their and their baby's internal bodies when captured through medical imaging techniques. It will analyse the discourse surrounding the mother-and-child dyad and will question whether imaging data, researched as part of an artist's exploration of the biomedical, symbolic and experiential reality of disease, can create new knowledge through the artist's practice.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sofie Layton (Student) |
 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4814-0550
|
Publications
Layton S
(2021)
Care(Less)
Layton, Sofie,
(2022)
Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association, American Medical Association,
in "What Arts-and-Health Practices Teach Us about Participation, Re-Presentation, and Risk."
| Title | 'Gestationality Serise' Colour Made Manifest - Exhibition organised with research staff from Royal College of Art exploring colour. |
| Description | 'Gestationality Serise' Colour Made Manifest - Exhibited a serise of Cyanotypes which intergrated the feotal Micro CT imaging data with natural and found objects to create a serise of Blue prints which explore Preganacy Loss as an Amneotic Landscape. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | Making the Micro CT images public at the Pump house Gallery Battersea. |
| Title | Gestationality - Selected for the Royal Academy summer show 2022. |
| Description | Cyanotype created using Micro- CT images of post mortem heart and feotal images translated from medical data into a acteate film. These were then combined with seaweed and natural flora along with medical instruments to create this image which is 50cms x 75 cms. Cyanotype on Japanese Shoji paper. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The image is part of a serise of research investigations into the use of medical images called 'Gestationality' exploring the potential of using medical images as non diagnositic tools to explore narratives around Gestation and Grief which is the theme of my PhD research. |
| Title | I care by... |
| Description | Essay as part of the RCA research community |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The essay desribes the process of using the cyanotype process and the Micro CT imagery in an inovative way to resurface loss. |
| Title | Loss is Mine and is Stored within this Body |
| Description | "Loss is Mine and is Stored within this Body" - can loss be translated through the medical image? An art installation and care laboratory/workshop space, in which participative workshops and performative encounters take place, this research project sought to articulate the complexity of the gestational and grief space through the use of medical imagery and data. Both the imagery and the data were transformed into cyanotype prints, sculptures, film, writing and sound elements. The artwork also incorporates participants' experience of illness and pregnancy loss. Developed as part of practice-based doctoral research into the possible remediation of medical data as a way of translating individuals' lived experience of pregnancy, baby and child loss. The research also seeks to return medical data (re)imagined as artworks to public view and discussion. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Alongside the installation which had an audience of 150 people I ran a symposium to facilitate a discussion exploring how we can articulate the complexities and realities of loss through an artistic and social lens. The symposium will bring together specialists from different backgrounds - Art History, Photography, Curation, Medical Humanities, Medical Science and Imagery, Psychology and Social Advocacy. Additionally, there will be a series of creative workshops where objects can be handled and a more intimate conversation can be facilitated within the care laboratory space. |
| Title | Re/Ad/dress Cyanotype Image shown at the RCA PhD Biennial |
| Description | The artistic materialization process is an act of re(ad)dressing our interiority, that is, the physical and conceptual internal landscape. This means re(ad)dressing how our bodily images are materially accessed and disseminated through medical imaging |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2025 |
| Impact | Presentation in group resaerch show and symposium presentation. |
| Description | Collaboration with the Micro CT postmorteum imaging team at GOSH and UCL |
| Organisation | Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) |
| Department | NIHR Great Ormond Street Biomedical Research Centre |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | As part of my PhD research I have been working in collaboration with the team at GOSH and using some of their post morteum to help explore my question. |
| Collaborator Contribution | My partners have enabled me to work with their Micro CT research images and to support the development of 3D models which has become part of my research methodology around surfacing the medical image. They have also facilitated the collaborated on a participatory workshop exploring pregnancy loss with members of the Miscarrage Association. |
| Impact | Art making - cyanotypes and reserach by practice outputs, art essay and creative writing and public engagement workshos with The Miscarraige Association. This is all part of my PhD research. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Creative writing and cyanotype workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Patients, carers and/or patient groups |
| Results and Impact | As part of the research by practice for my PhD . I worked with participants recruited as part of the Micro-CT imaging team from GOSH's puplic engagement process. We collaborated on one workshopwhere we explored loss through creative technques such as creative writing, clay modeling and an a presentation of my cyanotypes which use the medical images. Ian Simcock explained how the Micro CT imaging team use the images and how the research can support pregnancy loss. I ran a second women only workshop, where we explored loss outside of the medical context but using the micro CT imaging alongside personal found objects which the group brought . |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Everyday Creativity in the Sciences presentation at Oxford Physics Univercity |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Scientists, Academics, Artists, Outreach Scientists, EDI leaders getting together to explore how creativity intersects with scientists and science as we strive to improve scientific practice and our engagement with the wider society This event is part of the "AHRC Everyday Creativity Network" Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the University of Brighton's Centre for Arts and Wellbeing https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/everydaycreativity/ The network studies creativity in the context of day-to-day lives is addressed under 4 themes: enriching creative research methods, everyday creativity in the home and placemaking, everyday creativity in health and wellbeing, interfaces across arts, science and technology |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/everydaycreativity/ |
| Description | Loss is Mine and is Stored within this Body |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 'Loss is Mine and is Stored within this Body' - Installation at the Royal College of arts exploring the use of non diagnostic medical data remediated through an artists reflexive materialisation process as an exploration of Child and pregnancy Loss. Three days of preformances attreacted 150 audience members. Symposiium with speakers including Professsor Gemma Blackshaw RCA, Hermione Withshire - Senior Lecturer RCA, Professor Havi Carel University Bristol, Professor Jo Wray , Professor Owen Arthurs - ICH and GOSH and Hetti Judah - writer. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | On line talk for the London Arts and Wellbeing Alliance on a project regarding AI - Does AI Care? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | London Arts and Wellbeing Alliance on a project I was commissioned to do Does AI Care? for the London Science Gallery season AI: Whose looking after me? |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://london.sciencegallery.com/ai-artworks/does-ai-care |
| Description | Patient workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Patients, carers and/or patient groups |
| Results and Impact | As part of my PhD research I worked in the Antenatal cardiac unit at St Micheals Hospital Bristol with mothers waiting for their appointments. I discussed in the clinic and ran online workshops around their feelings of being pregnant andthe vunerability to themselves and their babies of having a faulty heart. I also worked with the clinicians and medical staff in the research process. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Re/Ad/dress |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Lecture presentation as part of the RCA Research Biennale. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |