contact details
email: delday@me.com
tel: 00 44 (0)1224 263647

web site:
www.ontheedgeresearch.org
Paper for Visual
Knowledges Conference

Dr HEATHER DELDAY
Research Associate, On the Edge Research

Biographical Statement
Originally trained in graphic design and specialising in bilingual design (MPhil, 1996) Heather Delday continued to develop her practice by exploring and questioning a different creative role - that of artist through a practice-led PhD (completed 2006). This doctoral studentship was made possible through a larger AHRC funded project at Gray's - On the Edge (see ontheedgeresearch.org).

Heather is currently Lead Artist in Artroom - a new pilot project initiated and funded by GHAT (Grampian Hospitals Arts Trust) to develop a role for the artist working with elderly people in hospitals (2007-08). She is also working on an evaluation for RACH (Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital) of Phase II of their art programme (with Professors Chesson and Douglas, RGU) and with the RACH team (2007-09).

Recent artworks include the exhibition ‘Passing Attentions’ a collaboration as performance and installation (Donview, Aberdeenshire 2007).

Pandora’s Box Collaboration with Dr Simpson
(clinical consultant, Genetics Dept, Medical School,
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary)

Personal Statement

The result of my PhD was to propose and develop a critical framework (or ‘matrix’) useful to the reflective practitioner. This matrix evolved and was tested through a number of collaborative projects between the artist-researcher and people working the field of health (e.g. clinical geneticists, healthcare professionals). It comprises three interdependent dimensions – the aesthetic, the ethical and the polemical. The study drew primarily from the work of the French social and cultural theorist Michael de Certeau who was interested in creative activity within everyday life (1984, 1998).

New projects in art and health will help to further develop the matrix, as reflexive and interpretative as also generative, used in a shared space to imagine-with and narrate the unfolding of a project.

// Back to Staff Profiles