Supportive Text
'The Cairt* Frieze’ is a cartographically inspired work tracing the previous locations of Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. The Infirmary was opened in November 1776 just off St Michaels Street. In May 1873 it moved to its Nithbank location and it has been at its present site since 1974. The design was created by digitally enlarging a 1961 coloured Ordnance Survey map until it broke up into tiles of individually coloured pixels. The main graphic features of this image, the road, the river Nith and the Infirmary itself, are picked out in hand glazed porcelain tiles. Textures and definition are built up by overlaying the coloured tiles with gold lustre and enamel transfers of the 1819 John Wood map of Dumfries (above). This exploits scale to create a layering of the historical locations of the Infirmary within the hospitals current location. The 1974 Infirmary position is the black and gold area in the lower left corner of the frieze.

*Scots Language: Cairt. A chart or map; a geographical survey.