Jessie Flood-Paddock

There is a particular type of over-sized, science museum anatomical display that involves actually walking inside a bodily organ, and it’s this kind of immersive experience that Jess Flood-Paddock had in mind when creating her exhibition Fantastic Voyage. Entering the exhibition the visitor passes into a space lined all around with pink tie-dyed fabric with just enough room to manoeuvre around a centrally located grey patterned dome. Here the pink fabric represents the membranous lining of the skull and the grey dome a giant brain, while the space between them is the subarachnoid space.

Looking for a formal way to present the brain, i.e. a way to resolve decision-making aspects of making a sculpture, Flood-Paddock decided upon the form of a baseball cap. And in deciding upon which baseball cap she selected the New Era 59Fifty, one typically authenticated by a large gold sticker on the cap’s peak. Though the 59Fifty remains a highly recognisable signifier of Hip Hop fashion (and this has a certain appeal for the artist [1]), it has long since passed from urban sub-culture into the mainstream: New Era now has a flagship store on Regent Street and the 59Fifty has become quotidian headwear, worn by bus drivers and skater kids alike.

The light reflecting off the tie-died fabric [2] bathes the space in a delicate pinkness, a softness furthered by the gentle physicality of the hanging material itself. It took care to make this fabric: the shopping and the choosing, the dying, the trips to the laundry. That softness and that taking care make it a more comforting environment. It makes it feel less scary. Because it is confronting walking around inside a skull and negotiating a seven foot high brain [3], being put in a place where it’s hard not to contemplate what actually constitutes the vital grey matter residing in all our heads.

The show’s title clearly has links to the classic medical sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage [4] in which a team of scientists navigate in a miniaturized submarine around a human body to remove an inoperable blood clot. They travel through the heart and other organs, but it is only when they travel into the brain itself that they are struck by a true sense of awe and wonderment. There is a lot of science now about the brain. And we are all familiar with those assured medical diagrams of brains that demarcate the brain’s different zones and their functions, as well as pinpointing the locales of mental illnesses and psychological conditions. But still, the brain remains a great-unknown territory yet to be fully explored and understood.

1. Fantastic Voyage is the title of a track by Coolio, as is Gangsta’s Paradise which Flood- Paddock used for her 2010 show at the Hayward Gallery Project Space, an exhibition which was similarly immersive.

2. Flood-Paddock is aware of and had enjoyed Richard Tuttle’s show at Stuart Shave/Modern Art in 2009 that included tie-dyed fabrics.

3. At seven foot the brain is too big to see over or around but is still of a bodily scale that invites engagement and participation.

4. The original 1966 film has by today’s standards quite rudimentary special effects. James Cameron hopes to change that with a planned update of the movie, saying “medical imaging has come an awful long way since the ’60s, so we can do some pretty amazing stuff”.

Jess Flood-Paddock (1977, London) lives and works in London. Educated at The Slade School of Art and The Royal College of Art. Recent exhibitions include Gangsta’s Paradise at the Hayward Gallery Project Space, London (2010, curated by Tom Morton), The Grid System A Regime: Spartacus Chetwynd & Jess Flood-Paddock at MCA, Malta (2010), Sacrifice at Swallow Street, London (2010, curated by Sarah McCrory), Phyllida Barlow & Jess Flood-Paddock at the Russian Club, London (2009) and Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2006). She was commissioned to make a short film for Channel 4 and Frieze Foundation Film Commissions 2010, and was shortlisted for the Converse / Dazed & Confused Emerging Artist Award (2010). In June 2011, Flood-Paddock will show another new sculpture New York, Paris, Peckham in the group exhibition Bold Tendencies Sculpture Project 5, Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park, London.