Edwina fitzPatrick: Trust

As part of the Artist-in-Research programme Edwina fitzPatrick spent a period of four weeks at Tioxide Europe, (the country’s largest producer of Titanium powder), Ellis and Everard (a chemical distribution company) and Phillips petroleum, (an oilport for the Ecofisk Field in the North Sea), all of which are based in Cleveland. These three companies form part of a belt of heavy chemical based industry, which historically was based upon importing urine from London to enable the extraction of cardinal red dye from local rock. During the time spent at these locations Edwina fitzPatrick worked with a number of different employees and produced a new work entitled ‘Trust’. Having worked with fifteen employees from these companies, she created individual portraits of them using the formats of COSHH labels and results from a questionnaire. The same participants were asked to supply urine samples to create a more ‘natural’ portrait. Donations of this nature require an element of trust, because like blood, urine reveals truths about the body, the storage and the presence of ‘alien substances’.