APPARITIONS (Digital video, 6:28 minutes)
A haunting journey through Horton Cemetery in Epsom, where thousands of pauper patients, mostly women, from five nearby mental asylums were buried. It is now an abandoned, derelict, and overgrown site, where all grave markers have been removed, except one.
The footage is overlaid with words drawn from the medical case notes of some of the patients buried there. They offer a glimpse into what was known about mental illness and the attitudes towards pauper patients in Victorian times.
The film is also overlaid with images of a diaphanous, disembodied dress, which has been recreated in the style of the standard-issue dresses that were made, mended and worn by female asylums patients. It alludes to the many absent women who have now merged with the soil in the woodland.
The accompanying music, specially commissioned and inspired by a visit to the Cemetery, is elegiac and spectral. It seeks to give voice to those who were voiceless, and to serve as a requiem to the long forgotten.
BIOGRAPHY
Eric Fong is a multimedia artist, and his practice is driven by a keen interest in the juncture between art, science, and medicine, informed by his experience as a former medic. His process involves in-depth research and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Fong holds an MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, and has exhibited internationally, including Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York; Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto; EAST International, Norwich; and Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London.
Fong has received awards at Creekside Open and RBSA Photography Prize and was included in Aesthetica’s Future Now anthology. He is a recipient of grants from Arts Council England, British Council and Leverhulme Trust.
One of Fong’s works is in the Arts Council England Collection.