Brilliant Aged Care

Brilliant Aged Care Artist’s Statement

Armelle Swan, BVA Hons I (Painting), MFA (USyd), 2023

The Brilliant Aged Care artwork arose in response to research conducted by a multidisciplinary team of representatives of the academic and healthcare sectors within Maridulu Budyari Gumal SPHERE, who collectively aimed to clarify what constitutes brilliant aged care.

The challenge was to not only extract the essence of meanings embedded in the research findings, some of which were symbolic, cryptic, or poetic, but to bring them to life in the form of a compelling visual artwork. Artist Armelle Swan reflects on her artistic process below:

'Artistic synthesis seemed the best way to characterise those distillate meanings, as they revealed multiple requirements of ideal care for older people elderly care, across multiple human health domains – the physical, psychological, spiritual, and social. In turn, the artwork reveals a system of shared ideas that can be more readily implemented, providing actual quality of life improvement.'

In the original research, participants were asked to select an object which to them epitomised their idea of ‘brilliant aged care’. These objects were subsequently referred to as ‘artefacts’ because the significance and import of their objecthood was now identified. The artwork itself (see below) is a combination of physical objects, some 2D, some 3D, in the form of paintings, assemblages and collage.

'I too, am capitalising on the object’s capacity to convey concepts, in this case about what the research artefacts tell me about ideal care of the elderly. This combination of paintings, collage and assemblages may collectively be described as an ‘installation’.'