My Smoking Family — Claire Collison

From Pharmacopoeia’s Cradle to Grave at The British Museum (permanent collection)

http://cradletograve.org

Artist’s mother, aunts, and Great Aunt at cousin’s wedding (British Museum postcard)

“The idea for a photographic element as a timeline for Cradle to Grave came about early in the discussions between Liz Lee, Susie Freeman and myself about the overall concept of the work.
It seemed to us that the personal nature of the piece could be well expressed by asking people to contribute images from their own family albums, the receptacle of our collective memories usually of either happy or significant events in our lives. The timeline is implicit in the pills narrative, covered by Liz Lee’s description, but we felt it could be enhanced and broadened by visual clues, objects, documents and images.
Our discussions included settling the nature of our artistic approach to the theme of Health and Well-being as experienced by many people in the UK today. We decided to follow the thread begun in 1998 in the Pharmacopoeia work, namely focussing on individuals for the drug narrative, and our own collective experience of the issues raised, along with an extension of this experience drawn from friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances.
On this basis we drafted a general letter covering the background to the project and asked people if they would like to contribute some real family album pictures to the piece. The letter was adapted to the recipients along with a personal note and sometimes an image of earlier work for information. 450 letters with return sae’s were sent out to family, friends and colleagues. 89 individuals responded with a total of over 400 photographs.” (David Critchley)