Helen Chadwick was one of the most inventive installation artists from the late 1970s until her untimely death in 1996. In 1985-1986 she used a photocopying machine in her studio to make the works One Flesh, The Oval Court and Vanitas, all of which are in the V&A collection. She was attracted to photocopying because the technique freed her from the constraints of collaboration with photographers. Vanitas consists of a large panel divided in half, one black and one dark blue. A rich curtain is held back by a youthful female arm on the blue, right-hand half, and a tattered curtain is held by a skeletal arm on the black, left-hand half. In the centre is the image of an engraved hand-mirror; the original, which Chadwick had specially made in Venice for Vanitas, hangs opposite the panel. When the viewer looks into the mirror, she or he appears framed by the curtains depicted on the panel and reminded, as the title suggests, of the transience of youth and beauty and the inevitability of death and decay.