Charles Robert Harrison’s art projects Single Yellow Lines and Object Projections are featured in Trajectories at LifeSpace in 2018. He is a member of the Created Out of Mind research group based in The Hub at Wellcome Collection in London that aims to explore, challenge and shape perceptions and understanding of dementias through science and the creative arts.
As part of the exhibition, Charles presents work from collaborative research into controlled and creative painted gestures made at Rare Dementia Support groups (Single Yellow Lines 1.0) and in conjunction with trials at UCL Sensorimotor Lab (SYL - Data), investigating the roles played by spatial orientation and balance mechanism disorders in symptoms of Posterior Cortical Atrophy and typical Alzheimer’s Disease.
For his moving image work Handling, he responded to the administering of cognitive testing materials in the video archive of Brain Researcher Professor Elizabeth Warrington which replicates the hand gestures of people on both sides of the assessment table and highlights the communicative space of testing. Charles is particularly interested in tests that have been devised in the areas of object and spatial perception and has created sculptural and video work, Object Projections, that explores bodily relationships to familiar and unfamiliar shapes and objects.
Single Yellow Lines has been made in collaboration with people who have attended rare Dementia Support groups and people taking part in the Seeing What they See research project at Whole-body Sensorimotor Lab, UCL. It has also been supported by collaborations and conversations with Prof Brian Day, Amy Peters, Professor Elizabeth Warrington, Prof Sebastian Crutch, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery Archives, artist Charlie Murphy and Created Out of Mind’s 'Single Yellow Lines’ and 'Testing Situations' research projects.
Charles studied BA Fine Art at The University of Northampton and is based in London. He has been collaborating with researchers and building projects that foreground the creative strengths of people with different forms of dementia for the past 3 years and his artistic practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, film and architectural design. His current research is focused on studying the curious intersections between neuropsychological testing and art.
