The Irregular Polygon series acts as a kind of distorted self-portrait of the artist and their complicated relationship with their own healing journey. Buckland-Willis explores their connection with chronic pain through the lens of the increasingly medicalised body. Having undergone significant orthopedic surgery in their early teens, the artist lives in a body that is not entirely their own, supported by titanium rods and screws to hold their spine in place, they exist in a strange liminal space between the natural and unnatural. Simultaneously healing and healed, their body is both soft and rigid, strong, yet incredibly fragile. ​

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Using stills from an earlier video work Crepitus which documented a chronic pain flare up episode, the artist mapped the vector points of the body as they contorted their body in an effort to relieve the pain. These unusual shapes that were created through this process were fascinating to the artist, as they represented a kind of simplified, almost mathematical graph of the pain experience - a strange attempt to turn the unquantifiable into visual data.

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Printed with the traditional chine-collé process, the geometric forms are monoprints on rice paper, which is then overlayed and printed with a lino block. This process mimics the surgical process with the rice paper acting like a layer of skin which is then brutalised through the press and embossed with the pressure of the lino plate.

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The work Embrace mimics the polygon process, however the geometric shapes act as purely emotive self-portrait as the artist struggled and continues to grapple with connecting with the world around them after hospitalisation. Exploring the disconnect between body and self, identity and the physical, the works offer a vingette into the inner-world of the artist.