‘Built from Scratch’ by Michelle Castles
A gallery showcasing bespoke works of art that depict the “maddening” effects of psoriasis symptoms for patients has been launched across the UK.
The art gallery is part of a wider project called Life’s an Itch – a collaboration between Celgene and the Psoriasis Association with support from the British Dermatological Nursing Group – which aims to raise awareness of the impact of itch among the patient and healthcare professional community.
In a survey undertaken by the two partners, 95% of those questioned said their psoriasis itches and almost two thirds described the symptom as driving them “mad”.
Despite this negative impact, patients reported that conversations about itch with HCPs are not routine, with 72% saying they find it difficult to describe how much itch affects their lives.
The Itch Art Gallery seeks to address this lack of conversation and share the patient perspective with the HCP community.
Artists were commissioned to produce a visual interpretation of what it feels like to live with itch using a 1,600-word itch word cloud as inspiration.
The word cloud was compiled online by collating the most popular words contributed by psoriasis patients to describe the physical, social and emotional impact of the itch symptom.
Sculptor Michelle Castles created a piece for the gallery called ‘Built from Scratch’.
She said: “The main inspiration for the sculpture was that it contained a narrative, some kind of story line. It came from lots of different patients so it was almost an interactive piece of work.”
She added: “I would hope that when people see this sculpture they would understand a bit more about the condition psoriasis, but more specifically, understand a bit more about what it feels like to be constantly itchy all the time.”
The completed Itch Art Gallery will travel between psoriasis-related meetings and medical conferences throughout the year as a part of the campaign’s efforts to promote the discussion of itch.