Doctor of Visual Arts candidate, Brian Sanstrom, uses his poignant work to investigate the merging of institution with individual, confronting mortality in pragmatic terms from within an efficient, organised system.

Much has been written about the human condition. From birth to death we all, in a multitude of ways, struggle to assert our independence, our sense of self and to understand our place in the world. When life is coming to an end, either through the natural ageing processes or more particularly when illness besets us, we may choose to contemplate and reflect on our life, and consider its’ significance. Faced with our own mortality, reasoning can often give way to acceptance and finally peace.

It is this zone, somewhere between acknowledging death’s inevitability, remembering and honouring those who have passed, where Brian Sanstrom’s visual arts practice sits. The inanimate objects that inhabit this artist’s practice stand as testament to the physical care of a patient, their bodily communion with medicine and finally their absence from the world as we know it.