UNITY
Healing abstracts by Colin Vickery
St. Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne - October 24 to November 25, 2005
Photographer and digital artist Colin Vickery explores the healing power of contemplative abstraction in his new series Unity .
The series was created by Colin when his wife, Pam, was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2001. Pam meditated to the images in the lead-up to surgery and during the recovery process. Thankfully, she is now cancer-free.
"Most of the world's cultures have a long tradition of art and healing," Colin says. "In recent years the scientific and medical communities have begun to explore the mind/body connection and the role that meditation and the meditative arts can play in the treatment of diseases such as cancer and restoring mental health."
Vickery's five large-scale (1.2 metre x 1.2 metre) images use mystical shapes embedded in vast areas of muted colour to simultaneously take viewers deep within themselves and to the outer reaches of creation - thus restoring a healing balance or harmony.
The images in Unity , one of which was selected for the 2003 Cancer Council Daffodil Day Arts Awards exhibition, revolve around large floating pink mandala-like forms.
Vickery sites the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato on sacred geometry and Jung's writings on the collective unconscious as the inspiration for his images.
"All worked with the notion that certain shapes can affect people at the deepest level," he says. "My hope is that this series can play a part in personal healing and, by extension, foster an awareness of the essential connections underlying all people - no matter what their religious, political or cultural backgrounds or beliefs."
Unity is set to be exhibited at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, one of the Australia's leading cancer treatment centres, during Pastoral Care Week in October 2005.
Viewers will have the opportunity to relax and experience Unity in the quiet surroundings of the hospital's newly-created Daly Gallery.