This Fatal Subject

Valerie has received a £30,000 Arts Award from The Wellcome Trust, to be shared with artist Susan Aldworth, and sculptor Eleanor Crook.

The award will fund six months of a new project in London, which will involve researching pathology at the group's residency at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, and with scientists at Kings College London Medical School, to produce cross-disciplinary work for public exhibition and publication.

A unique opportunity to have access to cutting edge medical science, the award was given partly on the merits of the collaborative project, This Fatal Subject, and partly on the participants' track records and achievements.

The Gordon museum is not open to the public; it is a teaching resource for Kings College London, located on the Guy's campus in London. Valerie's partners in the shared residency are conceptual artist Susan Aldworth and anatomical sculptor Eleanor Crook, now both Artists in Residence.

This builds upon an open-ended residency, formalising an arrangement granting Valerie access to study the specimens and write about them, made with the Curator, Mr Bill Edwards whose kindness in allowing her to visit and to share her work she acknowledges with gratitude. Valerie has been writing poetry on a forensic/anatomical theme for some time, winning a Northern Writer's Time to Write Award in 2006, and intends to work in collaboration with the artists on This Fatal Subject, involving text-based artwork, performance, and 3D poetry.

Valerie says "At the museum, at an evening gathering to mark an exhibition of visual art by medical students and staff, I read a poem, Benign, to an audience of medical students and staff, who responded with great interest and enthusiasm. I intend making regular visits to London to the museum, and have been invited to observe anatomical dissections at the medical school. I'm very excited about this opportunity, it's a real voyage of discovery for me, and a chance to work with two wonderful artists too. It's also a chance to show my work to the scientific community, and I hope to increase the medical students' engagement with the specimens, as I give the specimens a voice and tell their stories."