Memento Mori

Interactive installation for the Fremdkörper group show at the Kiezkapelle, Neukölln.

1-3 December 2023

The Kiezkapelle and surrounding cemetery are places where life and death coexist. The skull, the hourglass and the mirror have traditionally been used in art as symbols of transience and mortality.

Memento Mori offered a chance to interact with these symbols for a short while. Visitors were invited to select a linocut skull print and draw a self portrait over it using felt tip pens. Participants were asked to add their picture to the display.

Materials: Selection of A5 linocut prints (,Standard Issue Skull’), mirror, hourglass (3 minutes), hourglass (5 minutes), felt tip pens.

The printed instructions :

Memento Mori

To take part in this workshop experience, here are the guidelines:

Select a print and take it to the drawing table.

Sit down opposite a mirror and choose two or three coloured pens to draw with.

Get ready to draw your self portrait over the image of the skull.

Please do the drawing within the time limit allowed by the hourglass ( it will be either 3 or 5 minutes).

Please add your work to the display.

Thank you !

This is one of the linocut blanks offered to participants. I printed them in various colourways.

Over the three days the exhibition ran, 132 people contributed their self portrait to the exhibition. Here are some of them:

Blue Loop

© Gareth Harmer

The design was entered into the Stevens Award 2019, organised by the Worshipful Company of Glaziers. The brief was to design a panel 1000 cm x 1500 cm suitable for an LED lightbox for installation in an underground proton beam therapy waiting area at UCLH in London.

This is the finished sample panel (45cm x 45cm) showing a section of the proposed work.

The design is made up of fused tiles which have been leaded together, depicting a mobius strip.