Alexia Sinclair Creates Beautiful Work for Bill and Melinda Gates Project Art of Saving a Life

Artist & Photographer from Australia Alexia Sinclair has done it again! I wrote about Alexia's stunning art projects, such as her photo collection A Frozen Tale in the past, and between then and now, I actually had the pleasure of meeting her in person at the AIPP Event last summer in Australia. 

Alexia is a true artist, who welcomes challenges and takes months and sometimes even years to plan, develop and create her visual stories. What struck me the most, is she doesn't come up with excuses and never puts her artistic life and career on hold. She has traveled to Sweden, while being very pregnant, to shoot in a castle - The Royal Armoury of The Royal Palace in Stockholm - because an amazing opportunity presented itself. She participated at the biggest photography event as a keynote speaker, while her baby Heidi and Heidi's daddy were watching her presentation on the big stage from the audience.

Back then, Alexia mentioned that she was working on a new interesting art project that involved growing flowers in her garden. To me, as a beauty photographer, that sounded unbelievable - the longest preparation for my shoots can take a couple of weeks, so waiting for special flowers to grow to photograph them as part of a project was unheard of, yet very inspiring.

Art of Saving a Life

Today Alexia finally reveals the details and results of this wonderful project. Alexia was commissioned by and for the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation Art of Saving a Life project. The project sees 30+ artists (including Annie Leibovitz) contribute artworks to the theme of Medical achievements throughout history.

Alexia’s tableau depicts the first vaccine produced by Dr Edward Jenner in 1796. Take a look at the behind-the-scenes video to see this incredible artwork being constructed.

Letter from the artist:

"The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation approached me to create an artwork depicting Edward Jenner’s tale of the first smallpox vaccine, which is actually the first vaccine ever (as vacca is latin for cow, Jenner used the cowpox virus to immunise against smallpox). While researching the subject the enormity of the challenge dawned upon me. Small pox killed over 500 million people through-out history, from the nobility down to the poorest of the poor, not one person was exempt from it’s horrific grasp. 

If you’ve looked into the history of smallpox, you’ll know that it’s a horrible disease, not only because of the finality of the curse, but because of the manner in which the infected will suffer before their death. In a world where our imagery is so saturated with emotional pleas to human, animal and environmental suffering I’ve found that quite often the audience shuts off to the cause, they are desensitised to images of suffering, it’s easier to live in a state of denial than to take on-board the endless issues the world has today. 

Because of this, I wanted to try a different angle of attack, one where it inspires the audience to ask "what does this mean?", to delve into the symbolism of the work and know the issues and the facts behind the statement. It’s here where we learn about the issues and hopefully start a conversation about why it’s relevant. 

The artwork you see before you has both literal and figurative elements. We see the esteemed physician Edward Jenner inoculating James Phipps which would become the first vaccine. We see the glass bottles behind the characters, each bottle laden with skull and flowers, representing the substantial loss of human life, 1 million lives per bottle, ~ 500 bottles. The skull and flowers motif has been used in artworks for millennia, it represents rebirth, in this sense the vaccine has given us a second chance at eradicating smallpox.

Our central hero figure represents the establishment, in doing so stating that no-one in exempt from this heinous disease. The flowers through-out the artwork represent the disease itself, smallpox was referred to as heavenly flowers by the Chinese, the blooming of the pox mark on one’s body indicated your fate." 

Check out some of the behind-the-scenes images, that Alexia has shared with our readers:

You can see more of Alexia's beautiful work on her website www.alexiasinclair.com and follow her news on Facebook: Alexia Sinclair.

Alexia's gorgeous artworks are also available for purchase on her website in the Buy Art section.