 | | Lucy Campbell-Maguire's Memorial |
The physicality of it is arresting enough. Twelve life-sized wire-mesh sculptures rest in a gallery, accompanied by close-up pictures of Lucy’s parents’ time-weathered skin. Yet the ideas behind it are even more striking, not least because of the Northenden artist’s day job as a GP. It may be an unexpected combination of jobs, but Lucy sees the two vocations as being quite similar. | "An awareness of death can only make you live life more to the full." | | Lucy on why Memorial is a positive experience |
"When you are in the role of a doctor," she explains, "you have to give people 100 percent of your attention and your head space needs to be full of medicine. So if there’s any conflict between the two, it’s in using my mind in different ways. "But, while my art has brought me down to life and made me much more open as a person and a listener, I think the two aspects of my life compliment each other. Lots of people say that being a doctor is an art as much or even more than it is a science." Indeed, it is through her professional life as a doctor that the idea for Memorial began to take shape, though the trigger for actually creating the sculptures came from much closer to home.  | | Lucy Campbell-Maguire |
"As a doctor, I have worked with a lot of people who are dying, especially during the time when I worked at St Ann’s Hospice in Heald Green. I would have to certify people dead and go to the mortuary and things like that, and I found it a compelling and frightening experience. But I was fascinated by the peacefulness and the stillness that you’d find. "All of that was in my head when I suffered a personal bereavement three years ago. After that, I found I was haunted by quite macabre images and thoughts about what happens to the body after death. So that triggered me to do this piece." It may sound like a depressing topic to pick, but Lucy is positive about her aims for it. Yet, that didn’t stop her worrying about the feeling of emptiness and loss that exists in parts of the piece.  | | Lucy Campbell-Maguire's Memorial |
"It’s been a darker piece of work than I expected and I didn’t set out to make it like that. I think the final piece has elements of starkness to it, but that’s not the total story. The photographs of my parents bring life into it and as a whole, I think I’ve managed to combine the ideas of life and death. "It may sound odd, but in my personal way, having had so much experience of death has been a real life-force. An awareness of death can only make you live life more to the full and that’s what I’m investigating in Memorial. "I want people to understand it is about dying but also to find beauty in it. We all live amongst people we have lost, people we might bring to mind. You may think about what your grandad looked like but all you have is that sense of his shape or form in your head. This is a place to contemplate that."  | | Lucy Campbell-Maguire's Memorial |
Not that Lucy has a problem recalling her own parents’ forms. Alongside the sculptures, close-ups of her mother and father’s skin reveal the passage of time and its effect on the body, which she admits isn’t very flattering for the couple. "I’m not sure it’s pleasant for them to have enlargements of their wrinkles, their hands and their knees. They’ve been tolerant because it’s been hard for them to look at the photographs." Yet, in many ways, that is exactly what Memorial is setting out to achieve, to show us ourselves as we are and as we will become. Whether you are up to facing right now is your choice. If you are, this is the place to do it. Memorial is at the Central Art Gallery in Ashton-under-Lyme from Friday 27 April to Saturday 30 June. Admission is free. | 
