Procedure is from a body of work called Amphibia / Double Life. This series was inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's novel Galapagos, in which human beings' brains become so complicated that they implode and start to devolve. The narrative follows a group of humans that survive an apocalyptic event over millions of years to the point when they become seal-like creatures with very simple brains, who can survive both on land and in water. My reading of the novel coincided with a time when I had been undergoing holistic treatments such as acupuncture to treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I became fascinated by the systems that generate and channel energy through the body. The interaction of the heart, brain, lungs, digestive and nervous systems to transform external nutritional input into electrical impulses that power movement and thought. When I was making these images I was thinking also about what it means that these systems are contained and hidden within a porous but solid layer, the skin. How they are held in place by muscular and skeletal structures forming a kind of anatomical architecture that remains essentially stable over time. As I began to develop drawings I began to question what each element of this bodily construction is and what it does or represents when it is removed from its function. In this painting the central figure becomes transparent and symbolic - a holder for organ-like forms and a vessel that is being fed a liquid that looks like water which emerges from an external network of organs and outlets that seems to grow from the building. Under the floor the skin and hair of the figure’s flayed head is laid on the ground, and next to it sits something like a cartoon banana skin, anthropomorphised by a pair of sad / worried eyes. The figures entering from the left represent doctors or holistic practitioners, reduced to a toy like blankness. They stand like