I designed a bird box for an exhibition in cork and China called Tweetbox.  The concept is technology invading our homes so this was my design with silkscreen.

The logos for all different types of social media are literally invading someone's house and privacy.

I printed the woodblock today.  Here it is.

This semester I wanted to make at least one woodcut so I took the problem about doctors not having money and the facilities or time to look after multimorbidity patients properly.  So I took a picture of my brother in a position of despair and worked from it.  This was the outcome (I've yet to print it).

The caption is "Time? Care?.... Not there"

Finally I wanted to aquatint up the ambulance to get different tones on the plate to see what it would look like.  These are just experiments.  I want to push the plates I already have as far as they will go.  Here they are.

Here I rocked the plate back and forth in the acid to get a light into dark effect.

I wanted to address the problem of the cost of private healthcare and how it's out of a lot of peoples reach.  So I took a simple phrase that speaks for private hospitals who will not facilitate the needs of the poor without the bullshit.  It's written "At this hospital we promise to cater for your every need..... As long as you have a lot of money".  I purposefully left little other interpretation in the print.  It's clearly a direct attack on the failure of Irish healthcare.  I did a few with and without aquatint (still trying to get the hang of aquatint!!).  Here they are.

Note to self... Always clean the press before putting in a print!

I took some of the plates that I already did and started experimenting with colour.  These were the results.

I used yellow and green because they're the colours most associated with ambulances.

Zihni Sinir is a turkish illustrator who makes up machines and inventions that can't possibly exist.  I started looking at him because I had other ideas for making kombat gear against multimorbidity using medical equipment.  These remain as sketches in my sketchbook for now but it's Sinir who inspired them.  Here's some of his work.

Hans Haacke criticises social and political through his various installations.  I was drawn to him because I'm doing the same to the Irish healthcare system.  Here's some of his work.

I reverted back to David Shrigley for the vaguely crude drawings in my sketchbook as well as the newer prints that I've done.  I wanted a humorous print yet suggested something deeper.  David's work is hilariously crude and naive.  I love it!

Raymond Pettibon came to light in the 1980's in America during the punk rock scene.  He made work that highlighted the highs and lows of the US culture.  His work addresses various issues that were going on at the time like the Manson family murders, the general attitude to drugs etc.  I admire him because he addressed various issues through simple imagery that meant a lot.  This is what I strive to do in my own practice.  Here's some of his work.

As well as Hank Willis Thomas, Mona Hatoum also inspired me to build the fictional trolley.  I love her installation pieces.  She creates these well done objects that don't exist, yet they suggest something else when we look closer at them.  For example, a carpet made of sharp needles saying "Welcome".  It's contradictions like this that make us think twice about her work.  Here's a few installations she has done.

Vince Low, as well as a scribble drawing of an anonymous man on a fictional animal by Daniel Acosta who can be found in my research folder, inspired my scribble style etching of an ambulance.  Vince did a series of scribble portraits of various celebrities with dyslexia to raise awareness about the condition.  This was very personal to him as he also suffers from dyslexia.  Just as he used scribbles to address this issue, I adopted the scribble to raise the issue of healthcare.  His portraits are spectacularly done!  Here's a few.