Foreign Bodies — Jo Stapleton

The series, ' foreign bodies' started life initially as an experiment to explore the quality and potential of photograms using the Lith printing process. I began producing simple Lith print photograms of glass objects found in charity shops, inspired by Cornelia Parker's Polymer Gravure etchings of glass wear originally belonging to Fox Talbot. Producing photograms of glass in Lith, I was struck by how the process transformed the objects - producing a glow or visual echo around edges and details within the glass. In the context of covid, this prompted me to think of the objects in these early prints as somehow floating in fluid, biological and cellular in nature. In response I wanted to more specifically explore ideas around how the body absorbs and processes the products of our surroundings, be it a virus, macro plastics, or responds to our cultural behaviour e.g alcohol. Using a set of histologies transparencies supplied with an old medical textbook, I began projecting macro images of cells, tissues and material within the body on to the photographic paper, arranging and exploring the photogram objects within the projections.. As the series progressed, I began working with broken glass and smashed objects, exploring ideas of movement and break-down/ absorption of the objects by the body by stop-start, rotating the pieces of glass during the exposure process. My aim was to explore the photogram objects as 'foreign bodies' within the human body but also the beauty, otherness and alien nature of our own macro biology.