PUSH
An ongoing project exploring care, recovery and agency through sculpture and performance.
Since 2017 Sarah Davis has been working on PUSH, an ongoing project that focusses on the sculptural documentation of illness. It began as a means for art making whilst receiving treatment for Hodgkins Lymphoma. It has since grown to encompass broader issues relating to agency and the ritualistic nature of personal care.
In July, 2018 Davis took part in Tempting Failure: Fractured bodies, London’s Biennial of International Performance Art and Noise. She spent 3 days working in situ making multiple plaster casts of all the empty pills packets and medical ephemera she had collected over the previous 15 months. The work functions as an archive of her experience of having chemotherapy and a stemcell transplant for Hodgkins Lymphoma.
The PUSH project also includes the Pill Cup series. The first cup was created in 2019 and made from Sterling Silver, 6 x 7 cm. the 2nd, made in 2021, is cast in bronze. Each cup is Made with pills used to combat the side effects of Chemotherapy. including but not limited too Anti-sickness, anti -virals, antibiotics and antihistamines.
