Date:	April 2008 - March 2010
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 practice is people orientated and explores challenging issues that are concealed away from the public eye. Her aim is to draw the viewer into a world that is kept enclosed and private. Brett investigates the psychological representation of the human condition, and has always been interested in the unseen, addressing a private moment and trying to express it in a way that is moving and non-judgmental. Her work to date has explored mental health, domestic abuse and intimacy in the third age.

Brett's vision is explored through photography, moving image and sound as she feels that each different subject area under investigation demands different approaches to achieve defined representation.


Memory clinic project:

Brett worked intuitively with three out-patients and family members in their own homes and Glyn Menai Dementia Care Centre, documenting the subjects within their daily routine, recording conversations and everyday sounds to intertwine with photographs from the past and present day viewpoints from each participant’s environment.
Brett’s aim as an artist is to raise awareness of her chosen subject matter by encouraging the viewer to emotionally connect with the subjects and identify with them on a more intuitive and engaging level.

Hergest Adult Mental Health Unit - Photography project:

Brett worked alongside patients giving guidance on camera techniques and ways of visually responding to an environment in a more intuitive way. This enabled the patient to feel confident when using the camera and to express themselves independently.

Brett’s concerns as an artist working within the arena of mental health care are to encourage ‘respect’ and ‘understanding’ within the public domain by working with her subjects in a sensitive and engaging way.


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.’


Stitching the community closer together - project for Ysbyty Gwynedd.

Alison says "The stitched garments and objects I create penetrate the real and the imaginary exploring the issues of stitching and unstitching the self through everyday activity.

When I am making I am absorbed in the activity, working intuitively and guided by the thoughts and revelations that crafting uncovers. I want to discover who I am and why stitch is so important to me. Each object becomes a revelation and a token of memory. The stitched objects, books and documentation reflect my compulsion to express the relationship between the self and the outside world.

As Artist in Residence at Ysbyty Gwynedd I am able to challenge and explore my relationship with my `self` as mother, artist and as a creative facilitator sharing my activity with all who cross my path. My focus will be to ‘unpick’ and document the identities structured by parents, with themselves and their children through the visual language of stitch to create `Fibre Voices`.

Parenting can be a wonderful experience but sometimes it is tinged with self-doubt, concerns regarding loss of self-identity and depression. This has been my interest that I have begun to explore in my own art work during the residency at Ysbyty Gwynedd.

I will hopefully provide, over time documentation and artwork to support my research uncovering the experiences of modern day parenting.

During the 1st Year of the residency I have been working within the hospital environment with diverse groups of participants. Within the hospital I have facilitated two projects.

The transfer lounge `Blog Scroll` encouraged participants to print and stitch stories and memories, names and images into a colourful fibre blog. The Blog was constructed over nine months and is currently 60 ft long! Long enough to swaddle part of the hospital.
Maternity ward has been a springboard for ideas and discussion and an opportunity to meet new mums. As a result I collected stories and breast pads to illustrate new mum stories connected to breastfeeding and birth, home and ancestors. The breast pads have travelled and trailed around the hospital, Gwynedd, the Senedd and over to Vermont, USA this year. Eventually they will be created into a `breast pad frock` creating an opportunity for public engagement.

In the community I have been working with two groups of new parents in Llanberis and Blaenau Ffestiniog. Each group has create a space for themselves to explore self- identity, relationships with each other and new babies through a rich ancestral inheritance".


The resultant work will be exhibited at Ysbyty Gwynedd and will form a touring exhibition to be shown in galleries in 2010 and is currently on show at Oriel Gwynedd Museum and Art Gallery, Bangor until 12 June 2010.