Amalia Pica
Joy in Hospital Paperwork #1-65, 2016
Ink on paper
Oncology Isolation, St Bartholomew’s Hospital
Installed throughout the oncology isolation ward at Barts Hospital, Joy in Paperwork #1-65 consists of a suite of 65 drawings. All made using office rubber stamps, like those found in postal or immigration services, these quirky, playful works poke fun at bureaucracy and the monotony of administrative tasks. Pica has restricted her palette to the three ink colours most commonly used in official paperwork–black, red and blue–and with that, achieves a vast array of recognisable images that verge on abstraction including cacti, sunbeams, pylons, earthworms, the river Thames. A closer look at each reveals a network of stamp markings which read, in various languages, “paid”, “private & confidential”, “received”,“cancelled”, along other official directives. Given the repetition and tangle of stamps, one can imagine an office worker driven to distraction by piles of paperwork. This joyful installation also speaks of a bygone era, before digitalisation, when letters and documents were rubber stamped by hand.
Photography by Owen Richards
