John Conway designs mobile printing press to record people's feelings at the end of their lives
As part of a residency focused on palliative care, Irish artist John Conway has developed a mobile printing press that can be wheeled to a patient's bedside to produce prints capturing their thoughts and emotions as they near death.
Conway worked with Dublin-based fabricator Space Forms to construct the trolley, which was informed by references including bar carts, medicine dispensers and traditional printing presses.
Key functional elements include wooden drawers for holding paper, word blocks that patients can use to construct phrases and sentences, along with a surface-mounted press and a pull-out drying rack.
Conway, who has spent the past decade working on socially engaged projects, designed the printing press as a tool for documenting and sharing patients' feelings with loved ones or the wider public.
"In a lot of cases, the artworks might be the last thing these people put down on paper, or the ultimate statement to a loved one, so there's an urgency and importance to capturing what they have to say," he said.
The project was developed in response to Creative Ireland's callout for ideas aimed at enhancing health and wellbeing through collaborations between artists and local healthcare providers.
His initial response to the artistic callout was to propose a lengthy period of research and development that involved spending time with patients and staff at Naas General Hospital in County Kildare, as part of a residency programme called Did I Ever Tell You.
"I often find that the best way to make art in these contexts is to firstly not make art at all, but instead to go and spend time listening and trying to understand what's going on," he told Dezeen.
By combining input from healthcare workers with desk research, Conway developed a vocabulary of terms associated with care that formed the basis for the word blocks.
The decision to select roughly 200 relevant words rather than using a letterpress system introduced parameters that speed up the printmaking process, as well as making it easier and less daunting for patients.
In order to be able to bring the project to the patients, Conway realised the printing press needed to be mobile and therefore began working on a version with wheels that resembles hospital equipment.
"I really wanted it to feel like it was part of the healthcare set-up, so that it fitted in with the traffic you see in a hospital corridor," he claimed.
"As curious as it looks, it was designed to seem as if it's meant to be there, so it becomes accepted as part of the infrastructure."
The trolley's tubular metal frame is finished in a playful pastel-pink hue, with translucent blue side panels adding a contrasting pop of colour that helps it to capture attention on the wards.
"I do want it to turn heads and also lean into the eccentricities that people expect from an art project," Conway explained, adding that patients' curiosity can lead to referrals and new conversations.
The artist typically begins the process by meeting patients without the printing press to learn more about them and what they might want to get out of working with him.
He then suggests words based on their previous conversations or invites patients to circle words on a print containing all of the available options. The words and their positioning can be adjusted iteratively until a satisfactory outcome is achieved.
Having spent most of 2025 conducting research and evolving the concept that led to the printing press, Conway is continuing to work on ways of integrating an ongoing arts programme within the care system.
A collection of prints from the project will be framed and installed at Naas General Hospital as an archive. Others will be gifted to patients' families and loved ones, or placed in the hospital's solace rooms when a patient has died.
"What I've learnt from this project is that in a healthcare context, artists can operate as a kind of curious outsider, allowing patients to create something based on open and honest discussions," Conway said.
Other designs for death that have recently been featured on Dezeen include collective urns and a device that detects when someone dies alone.
The photography is by Evanna Devine.
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