The Pharmacological Body: AIDS/PrEP Map, 2023 / Jeremy Smith

PXD 1621

fonds

2023

Graphic Materials, Drawings

9675749

1 drawing - red and blue ink on paper - 185 x 120 cm

Jeremy Smith is a Sydney-based artist whose practice integrates drawing, painting, etching and animation with cartographic conventions and psychology to create subjective psycho-geographic maps which explore identity, the subconscious and sexuality.

References:
Smith, Jeremy. "Jeremy Smith Artist. About". Accessed 25 September 2023. https://jeremysmithartist.wordpress.com/about/.

M Contemporary. "Jeremy Smith". Accessed 25 September 2023. https://mcontemp.com/artists/jeremy-smith/

Created by Jeremy Smith in his Darlinghurst studio in 2023 and exhibited as part of the artist's solo show Atlas of Narrative Cartography at M Contemporary, Darlinghurst, from July 6 to July 19, 2023.

A large pictorial work examining the medicalisation of the gay male body during both the AIDS epidemic years and in the current times of widespread use of Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) by gay men. PrEP is a medicine taken to prevent seroconversion to HIV.

According to the artist, the work “is based on my PhD research into the history of HIV/AIDS in Sydney on one side (in red) and my personal history taking the anti- drug PrEP (Pre Exposure Prophylaxis) (in the light blue colour of the daily pill). Based on the circulatory system of a body to my size, from Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s ‘On the Fabric of the Human Body in seven books’ (De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem) 1543.” (Source: Library correspondence file).

Access via appointment - Permission from Collection Care required for access

In copyright:
Copyright holder:: Jeremy Smith
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy Jeremy Smith

Artist signature visible in lower right corner.