Breathing Space

‘Breathing space’ is about marking time through breath. When breath stops, time stops for each individual chronology. Re-iteration, repeating with variation again and again, in and out, is the rhythm of craft, of skill in drawing and making. Reiteration mirrors the arduous patterns of ancient textiles, ceramics, or inscriptions, patterns derived from images of feathers, scales, or leaves

The impact of immediate breast reconstruction on the time to delivery of adjuvant therapy: the iBRA-2 study

Background: Immediate breast reconstruction (IBR) is routinely offered to improve quality-of-life for women requiring mastectomy, but there are concerns that more complex surgery may delay adjuvant oncological treatments and compromise long-term outcomes. High-quality evidence is lacking. The iBRA-2 study aimed to investigate the impact of IBR on time to adjuvant therapy. Methods: Consecutive women undergoing mastectomy ± IBR for breast cancer July–December, 2016 were included. Patient demographics, operative, oncological and complication data were collected. Time from last definitive cancer surgery to first adjuvant treatment for patients undergoing mastectomy ± IBR were compared and risk factors associated with delays explored. Results: A total of 2540 patients were recruited from 76 centres; 1008 (39.7%) underwent IBR (implant-only [n = 675, 26.6%]; pedicled flaps [n = 105,4.1%] and free-flaps [n = 228, 8.9%]). Complications requiring re-admission or re-operation were significantly more common in patients undergoing IBR than those receiving mastectomy. Adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy was required by 1235 (48.6%) patients. No clinically significant differences were seen in time to adjuvant therapy between patient groups but major complications irrespective of surgery received were significantly associated with treatment delays. Conclusions: IBR does not result in clinically significant delays to adjuvant therapy, but post-operative complications are associated with treatment delays. Strategies to minimise complications, including careful patient selection, are required to improve outcomes for patients

Towards Aphrodite

I wasn’t sure I could walk that far to be honest — 17 km seemed quite a long way for a day’s walk. It had been in my mind for years to make the walk from new Paphos to old Paphos along the pilgrim’s way mentioned by the geographer Strabo in the first century. He wrote that every year ‘men and women came from other cities to celebrate all along the road’ from the port at new Paphos to the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the hill high above the coast. I tried to research the route by looking for the old ways through Yeroskippou, tracing the path through shrines as Stathis had suggested

Kay Lawrence : land, self, loss

A Gorgon in the mid-threads of a shawl, fringed with serpents is the description of a baby\u27s shawl, the key motif of the story of the mythical Greek Kreusa. Raped by Apollo, the young princess hid their baby Ion in a cave at birth, wrapped in a covering woven with a Gorgon head she had made herself. His later recognition as a grown man, her son, by a distraught Kreusa depended on the identification of these figured cloths that she had woven as a girl. On this distinctive evidence which gave Ion his genealogical birthright hung the future of the people of Athens who were descended from him. The fierce Gorgon image. which originally had turned all viewers to stone, acted as an apotropaic [\u27turning away evil\u27] force to protect the innocent baby. Tapestries and woven images are crucial in Euripides\u27 play in defining the architectural and political spaces in the Greek story of Ion as well as the understanding of personal fate

Towards Aphrodite

I wasn\u27t sure I could walk that far to be honest - 17 km seemed quite a long way for a day\u27s walk. It had been in my mind for years to make the walk from new Paphos to old Paphos along the pilgrim\u27s way mentioned by the geographer Strabo in the first century. He wrote that every year \u27men and women came from other cities to celebrate all along the road\u27 ITom the port at new Paphos to the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the hill high above the coast. I tried to research the ro ute by looking for the old ways through Yeroskippou, tracing the path through shrines as Stathis had suggested

Relations for the Back Country: Sensory Landscapes

Explores sensory modes of experiencing landscapes, contrasting settler travels through arid country with Aboriginal practices. Draws on Constance Classen\u27s idea of senses supplying conceptual models of society\u27s thinking

Gleams of light: evolving knowledge in writing creative arts doctorates

From the mid-1980s to the present, art schools have embedded themselves within university structures in Australia. Around 35 universities now offer research degrees in creative arts (Baker and Buckley, 2009). Accompanying this development, the teaching of art practice and theory has followed the humanities in embracing philosophies of semiotics and post-structuralism from Europe and America through the lenses of feminism and postcolonialism

Roman wall paintings in the Pafos theatre

The fragments of painted plaster were first found in the 1996 and 1997 Pafos Theatre seasons in trenches lR and 1J on the south side of Wall 108 (the analemma), where the parodos provides an entrance to the orchestra on the western side of the theatre. Encrusted plaster with faint indications of colour and pattern still adhered to Wall 108. Other coarser fragments of red on cream were found in 1999 in the IR-IJ extension to the west. The extensive excavation of the western parodos area in 2001 (Trench IFF) revealed many more painted plaster fragments, some on curved sandstone blocks that had formed a vaulted ceiling, and some loose in the stone tumble that seemed to have fallen from the south against the face of the painted Wall 108. It is not certain if the parodos was covered to its full length by the barrel vault