‘Immobilisations’
2018

Installation on-site at Bold Tendencies, London


In this installation Johann Arens adopts the interior of a shipping specialist Pack&Send in Elephant and Castle including their packaging method Foam-In-Place. These bespoke foam moulds, used to create customised cradles for fragile objects in transit, form a new series of sculptures. The same method is applied in a medical context for patient immobilisation during a CT scan. Accordingly, the packed objects are sculptures derived from anthropomorphic training phantoms; medical dummies used to prepare for radiography and CT scanning.

'The phantom provides life-like radiographs with absorption approximate to human tissue, allowing scanning under actual clinical setting. The three-dimensional body parts enable both PA and LATERAL images to be obtained. The phantoms bones and vessels show realistic contrast gradations on the image along with tube voltages.'