'What do you, we, I see?'

'What do you, we, I see?' is a creative-research collaboration between artist Daniel Regan and Dr Sarah Yardley exploring the role of relationships and relationship-centred approaches to healthcare.

The project focused on Palliative Care and Mental Healthcare as two areas that depend on relationships between service users, family and friends who support them and a wide range of health and social care professionals.

The exhibition consists of a series of six photographs produced by Daniel Regan in response to working with the research team and workshop participants with lived experience of Palliative Care, Mental Healthcare or both as service users, carers or service providers. The images were co-produced with a group of research participants, with the intention of using the images to engage a wider audience in conversation about the issues raised.

Daniel writes "Care has been an important theme throughout my life and work. As a young person I often cared for my mentally unwell mother, and vice versa as I grew older with my own difficulties. For two decades we delicately oscillated between the carer and the cared for and its associated challenges. I am fascinated by the caring roles that we explore in our relationships, the complexity of difference in what it means to be cared for individuals, and how systems can foster or prohibit caring environments. What happens when people are treated as systems? Who fits into these systems and who is left outside? How can medical professionals work with patients in an individualised way whilst within the confines of rigid healthcare systems?

Responding to the key themes in Sarah’s research this abstract series of images explores the necessity for fluidity within systems of care, reflecting on themes of synchronicity, fragility and impermanence."

Images are copyrighted to Daniel Regan and shared with permission by the artist.

'Cells'

An unknown force, a barrier or boundary that needs to be crossed.

'Collective'

Everything being in its right place: being seen, the very nature of being together, the weight of our lives being witnessed by others.

'Transitions'

How things can shift before your very eyes.

'Eclipse'

A perfect alignment of needs and care.

'Open Waters'

Carving out a path and navigating choppy waters.

'Islands'

Illusions (and who creates them), paths, us vs them, people being locked out.