Arts Review: Artists doing the rounds

Published on Friday 9 January 2009 15:49

THE artist Jacqueline Donachie and I are stalking the corridors of the Centre for Health Sciences in Inverness when I glimpse a prone patient through an open door. He's lying in a hospital bed in blue striped pyjamas, but is curiously immobile.

He is, it turns out, not human at all, but plastic. He's a teaching aid and there's an anatomical chart of the human respiratory system hanging beside his bed. "Things like this are fantastic," Donachie laughs. "It's such a brilliant environment for an artist to find themselves in."

The Centre for Health Sciences is a shiny new building next to Raigmore Hospital, and it's full of hidden surprises like our friend in the pyjamas. What I've glimpsed is not a hospital ward, but part of an NHS Scotland education facility.

An initiative of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and unique in the UK, the centre brings together assorted health science organisations under the same roof. It includes Stirling University's Department of Nursing and Midwifery alongside working dental surgeries and training facilities for dental therapists. The final phase of the building is the Highland Institute for Diabetes.

The biggest surprise of all, though, is the artwork, some of it of museum quality, which has been integrated into the very fabric of the building. The building's main thoroughfare, 'The Street' is dominated by Ecbolic Garden, Winter, an artwork by leading Scottish artist Christine Borland. Forty hand-blown glass vessels are suspended from the ceiling, each holding a plant specimen associated with herbal medicine and midwifery.

There is one other place in Scotland you can see such a complex work by Borland and that's in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. "Every new building these days can be glass and chrome," says 39-year-old Donachie, who has been lead artist on the project since 2006, "but a public space has to be more than just that."

Donachie's role has been to work with the design team, to create new art for the centre herself and to instigate the commission or purchase of other artists' work, including prints by Toby Paterson and textiles created by Cromarty-based designer Jane Dunn. "You have a role where you are not part of the design team, you're not going to work in the building, you are not the client, and you're not the funder. You're a lateral thinker."

She is relaxed and familiar in this medical building. From the canteen to the university facilities, our tour is repeatedly interrupted by staff stopping to wish her a Happy New Year. But you wonder if this ease is hard won. Early on in our conversation she talks of her feelings about science, and says: "People should be aware of science as part of their equipment for everyday life."

She has had to learn the hard way to equip herself. In 1999, Donachie's newborn niece was diagnosed with the muscle-wasting illness myotonic dystrophy. The condition is genetic and progressive and, because of the genetic phenomenon of anticipation, grows more severe with each generation. On medical investigation it emerged that it actually affected three generations of her immediate family including her father and sister. Donachie has done her time in hospital waiting rooms, clinics and labs.

As an artist, she waded into the subject, and a series of artworks, two books and a film have explored both the impact of the condition and the science behind it. Her Wellcome Trust-funded work with the geneticist Dr Darren Monckton at Glasgow University, and subsequently with experts around the world, has helped bring the laboratory scientists who work in this field much closer to the experience of patients who live with the hard reality of disability.

So it is with more than a little sense of mission that she talks about bringing together the different strands of activity in the building. "I've always had this interest in meeting places and social spaces. This place is an interesting interface between patients and doctors and scientists. When I worked on the subject of genetics I was fascinated by the scientists – often they work in a bubble and, of course, there's no reason why they should be directly involved in patient care. But everyone has so much to learn from each other."

In the building this is reflected in many ways. There are shared entrances and social spaces. There is just one caf, with furniture designed by Donachie using timber and craftsmanship sourced just a matter of miles away. At the centre of the building's courtyard, Donachie has helped create a garden and built The Disc, a huge concrete circle which acts as a focal point, seating area and picnic spot. It has the capacity to warm up, using the waste heat from the centre's labs and refrigeration units.

Many of Donachie's ideas are based on her own experiences. She takes me round the dental surgeries, which are a much-needed expansion of NHS dental facilities in the Highlands. "I know every inch of Artex on my own dentist's ceiling," she says, "so it seemed important to provide patients with something to look at."

Donachie suggested the Glasgow artist Mary Redmond, who travelled the Highlands in her camper van, photographed the landscape and produced a series of delicate, painted wooden sculptures that suggest the outlines of the environment beyond Inverness. You can lie back in your chair and look at the silhouette of that extraordinary mountain Suilven, imagine the blue sky over Sutherland or the outline of trees in Glen Feshie.

Isobel Madden, head of the School of Oral Health Science at the UHI Millennium Institute, tells me the presence of artworks in dental facilities actually improves care. "People coming into clinical facilities need to be stimulated, they need to be relaxed. They need something that will distract them from any clinical procedures," But it's also about improving access. "Only 50% of the UK population actually access dental care. If we want people to come and take up dental treatment, we need to provide facilities that will make them confident."

For Donachie the question of what it means to make art for this context is both professional and deeply personal. "I have a foot in both camps," she says. "My art head says that art should enhance the building, it shouldn't be practical, it should help change people's perspective about where they are and what they are there to do. Then there's a bit of me who has spent too much time in waiting rooms who feels that you should forget that and just make it comfy."

But she has done much more than make the building comfy. "Ultimately it comes down to respect," she says. "If you're crammed into rubbish buildings, whether as a patient or as an employee, you're not going to feel good. I feel really strongly that beautiful buildings shouldn't just be for people with beautiful jobs."

The completion of the Centre for Health Science, Inverness, will be marked by a week-long programme of activities. A public open day with art tours will take place on January 20 www.centreforhealthscience.com