This series of paintings, oil on canvas, take language learning as a point of departure.  They comprise pairs of panels, in the manner of a diptych. On one is an image of a virus taken from the Wellcome Collection and painted in colours drawn from pharmaceuticals packaging; on the other, phrases culled from the bedside manner section of a medical training manual for overseas doctors. The texts contain familiar but impersonal words of concern and kindness: “Does it feel the same on both sides?” “Flat, did you say? I’m sorry to hear that.”  The idea that such phrases might be learned seems important, as it puts distance between the utterance and its author. Agency is not the same as authorship, even when it comes to experience. For art history the issue has a longstanding resonance. Indeed: How is it that so much of this language is shared with modernist critique of Abstract Expressionism? These paintings were exhibited in fulfilment of a Batchelors degree at Chelsea College of Art.

Nick Ferguson 1998