Art: Cradle to Grave
Authors: Colin Martin
Journal: BMJ (2003)

The inaugural display in a new series of long term exhibitions at the British Museum explores the diverse ways in which people deal with the challenges of everyday life. “Living and Dying” particularly looks at how different cultures strive to gain and maintain a sense of wellbeing. Artefacts from the museum's ethnographic collections illustrate the values that indigenous people attach to their environment, their spiritual beliefs, and each other.​other.




Figure 1



Cradle to Grave: charting life for everyman and everywoman




Cradle to Grave, an installation that has been commissioned specially for the exhibition, reflects on Western biomedical approaches to managing illness. Subtle yet powerful, it presents the medical histories of a typical British woman and man, in the form of pill diaries. Each is a 13 metre length of black net fabric, into which textile artist Susie Freeman machine-stitched more than 14 000 prescription tablets and capsules, representing the drugs that typical people take in their lifetimes.

Freeman is one third of a collaborative called Pharmacopoeia. Its other members are video artist David Critchley and general practitioner Liz Lee. To research the classes of drugs used in the installation, Lee reviewed national prescribing data to identify the most commonly prescribed medicines, broken down by age and sex. She also considered medicines likely to be prescribed to hospital inpatients. Although over the counter medicines are not included, it is estimated that the average person's use would bring their lifetime total to 40 000 pills. In charting complete lives for the installation's everywoman and everyman, Lee drew on the records of four different female and male patients.

Practical and aesthetic considerations affected the final selection. “Very large and very small pills could not be incorporated into the tiny pockets in the fabric and so were rejected,” explained Freeman. “Where two formulations were equally appropriate we chose the more colourful variant and, as many drugs are white, we distinguished between them by selecting different shapes or including some still in their packaging.”

Labels provide information about the medical conditions or diseases being treated at key points in the pill narratives. The collaborators are aware that the timelines limit their ability to demonstrate periods of good health or disease remission. “We felt that the drug narrative could be enhanced and broadened by other visual clues—objects, documents, and photographs,” said Critchley.

The trio used more than 500 everyday family photographs to create the composite male and female photographic chronologies. Descriptive, handwritten captions flow alongside the respective lengths of fabric. Medically related objects and documents personalise the pill narratives, successfully evoking the pair of imagined lives. Ampoules and syringes represent childhood immunisation; dental casts, an x ray of teeth, a pair of spectacles, and a hearing aid—humorously arranged as a human face—represent the devices used to counter physical decline. The inclusion of x rays showing a female breast cancer lump and a heavily pinned fractured ankle indicate areas of clinical expertise other than prescribing.