The subject of assisted suicide has been in the back my mind for a while now mainly due to Margo Macdonald’s campaigning, but this last week it seems to have upped a gear in terms of “thinking” about it. Firstly, there was the drama on BBC1 last Sunday A Short Stay In Switzerland starring Julie Walters as Dr Anne Turner, who took her own life in 2006, in a Zurich clinic after developing an incurable degenerative disease. I ended up not watching it as I was almost crying at the advert for it. The third thing was Casualty tonight, which involved a main character’s brother dying having signed an Advanced Directive, which stated that he did not want to be resusitation attempts to occur, a storyline which will run for a few weeks more.

The second thing is an exhibition by Tracy McKenna & Edwin Janssen called Life is Over! If You Want It, currently on at the Cooper Gallery at DOJ. The exhibition is related to the artists experiences with assissted suicide. The most striking thing about the exhibition is the smell as you enter the gallery. There is a huge vase of lillies on the table the artists are using as a discussion area, and it instantly reminds you of a clinical hospital environment, of illness and death. The lighting is low, and on a personal level reminds me of hospitals at night, and the sort of nervous anticipation of a family member being moved from a&e to a ward at 2am in the morning, where the atmosphere is still, eerie and you yourself are in a sort of daze. The exhibition includes a selection of paintings the artists have borrowed from galleries/museums in Perth and Edinburgh and their own “research” in the form of pinboards and a projection of written notes, which will be added to as they will be in the exhibition space to actively discuss issues arising from the subject. The most touching part of the exhibition is a projection of a film that on first few appears not to change, but to be a photograph of an indoor scene, until you notice the digital photo frame on the table within it, showing personal photographs. The exhibition also includes drawings from their ongoing series of THE JOHN & YOKO DRAWINGS, which actively relate to the subject with slogans such as Death Is Gentle. Overall the exhibition is quite somber but very peaceful at the same time. As part of our speak programme we also got a talk from Tracy McKenna and Edwin Janssen, which touched on their solo work prior to working collaboratively and subsequent works, ending with this one. It was quite a moving talk as Edwin Janssen spoke about his fathers death by assisted suicide, highlighting the difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. One of the most powerful aspects of the exhibition is probably that it has come from personal experiences.