Date:	April 2008 - March 2009
Artist:	Alison Mercer and Karen Brett
Location:	Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor, Wales

Artists-in-Residence at Ysbyty Gwynedd

Artists Alison Mercer and Karen Brett have been chosen to spend a year with the staff and patients at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor creating artwork inspired by their surroundings. Both artists have previous experience of working with other people to create and inspire their artworks.

Karen Brett’s latest works have focused on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and she has recently completed a body of work looking at intimacy in the third age that she has entitled ‘The Myth of Sexual Loss’. Karen works through the medium of photography and more recently has began to create digital and sound pieces.

Photographs enable us to remember a special person, a favourite place, and bring back fond memories. Looking through such photographs gives us a sense of self-esteem and self-worth. However, most often these photographs remain unseen, stored away in photo albums or sealed boxes.

For her work at Ysbyty Gwynedd, entitled ‘Changes’, Brett will explore memory problems with older people to develop ideas uniting the past with the present within a single photograph. The aim of the project is to work with past images and memorabilia that could be integrated into present day situations through the process of an image projection. The participants would be encouraged to create his or her own individual representation that would embody their memories, emotions and experiences.

Alison Mercer works in stitched textiles and fibre. She creates innovative artworks that blur the boundaries between fine art and craft. Works are often inspired by personal narrative. “I intuitively craft ‘devotional objects’ drawing and incorporating imagery and the few handed-down memories I possess.’

The resultant work will be exhibited at Ysbyty Gwynedd and will form a touring exhibition to be shown in galleries in 2009.