This installation of 'Get Well' cards and floral arrangements allows us an opportunity to delve into our relationships to sickness. To question our responses, to recognise the differences between the states of sickness and wellbeing, to look at how we communicate from one state to the other.

Upon entering the installation space we are reminded of entering the hospital ward, but in this case, the beds, the patients, the equipment and staff are missing. What greets us are the cards and the flowers, as if left behind as testament to the communication between the sick and the well. The work leads from arbitrary arrangements of cards to those of specific people. The floral arrangements vary from constructed pieces to vases of dead and dying flowers, some still intact in their cellophane wrapping, mirroring perhaps the cocoon of the patient's isolation. In Cool Silence handmade roses, pale and subtle in colour adorn a graceful branch. The whole seeming restful until on closer inspection a shock of fluorescent glass stones appear where the soil should be, its discordance unsettling. The metallic brightness of the smiling faced balloons in Get Well, makes us want to scurry past its tackiness unless perhaps a fond memory makes us linger if such an apparition had cheered us once before. Panacea's pom poms in kitsch box pot stops us with dismay at its gaudiness. As we look at these and the other arrangements, the gifts we give the sick, I notice the tackiness that seems to appear in most. Flowers give pleasure, remind of the outside world, are fresh and alive until that fine line when decay becomes apparent. But it is how we present them, what we add to them, how we dye them strange colours, that transforms them into something not quite right. And too, as they begin to die we perhaps hesitate to throw them out.

But it is the cards with their sometimes humourous often trite images and messages that really afford us the opportunity to see an aspect of the sickness/wellness relationship. The greeting card industry provides us with easy words of well wishes.

Reactions of hesitancy and awkwardness greeted my first thoughts of reading inside the cards. Thoughts of invading someone's privacy, the feeling of voyeur, and memories of the times as visitor my eyes straying to the cards, wondering what was said inside. Sickness makes us uncomfortable from either side of the patient/visitor experience.

Reading the cards began a poignant and curious journey. Not knowing if the receiver of the card had had a small accident or was in fact dying of a terminal illness or the myriad of possibilities in between, meant we were without an indicator to the specific reality so the focus was more on the mode of the communication, the sentiments expressed: the words inside written by friends and family attempting to express their pain and distress at the sickness of a loved one; the buoyant blatant camaraderie wonderfully offhand and provoking of others; the awkward and clumsy; the disparaging tone of a workmate telling of a different shared humour; the surprisingly articulate and understanding few; the formal and brief.

The ever present admonishment to 'Get Well Soon!' began to sit strangely: the patient would get well as soon as was possible to; taking the time required. Perhaps we should be using other words.

Acknowledging and pondering the awkwardness, the strangeness, the difficulties in our ability to communicate may not make us any more able to do so. But realising our inability to understand what another is experiencing may make us a little less judgmental, a little less impatient. Perhaps by observing a little of someone else's world we may gain insight into our own.

By presenting the cards and flowers in isolation from their normal milieu, Emily Clarke has created a potent and unnerving world in which to observe the medium of our well wishes.