presents
an-Aesthetic
a Hybrid exhibition at tactileBOSCH Studios / Cardiff
Curated by Mandee Gage
11th - 31st May 2008
Private View: Saturday 10th May 6.30 – 9.00pm
an-Aesthetic
Medical Procedure or Social Surgery?
Hybrid present their latest take on the weird and wonderful world of art, science and health in an-Aesthetic , an engaging artistic mix to tickle the senses and stoke the mind. The exhibition presents work sourced from both the operating table and the psychiatrist's couch, with artists exploring ideas of consciousness, pain and sentience in relation to medicine and health. The exhibition includes sculpture, video, photography, installation and performance – with some Hybrid quirky cocktails thrown in.
This innovative brand of art takes the audience into a range of unknown territories and encourages the viewer to contemplate upon times when we experience loss, illness or numbness. an-Aesthetic explores both medical and social surgery, examines the psychology of the senses and presents hidden dimensions of our everyday existence.
Some Hybrid artists work in highly personal territory, for example, Myrtle Clark Bremer is an ME sufferer who explores the numbness of mind and body in her work; David Jane deals directly with his own experience of viral encephalitis; and Angela Rumble draws on her practice as a professional dentist. Others combine science, technology and craft from a critical perspective, for example, Heather Barnett's cellular wallpapers connect microscopy, self-portraiture and interior design; Mandee Gage creates work on the breakdown of complex structures, intersecting mental health and the environment. She has employed body scanning and body casting along with projections, sound and traditional crafts.
Hybrid:
Hybrid Art/Science group was set up in 1998 by London based artist Mandee Gage to create a supportive network for sharing ideas around collaborative and trans-disciplinary practice. By combining the intellectual perspectives of artists and scientists Hybrid aims to enable new ways of thinking and widen access to complex theoretical concepts. an-Aesthetic features six members of Hybrid joined by three specially selected guest artists two of whom are based in Wales.
The Gallery
tactileBOSCH was formed in 2001 by Kim Fielding and Simon Mitchell , two Cardiff-based artists, who aimed for no holds barred cutting edge gallery space to enhance their outward looking studio collective. Familiar with the benefits of regional & international exchange, having lived, worked & exhibited abroad both felt the importance of a locally based environment that was able to cope with any possibilities. A [non] white cube gallery that allowed any premise to have validity and the room to gestate the idea. Project funding secured [thanks to Arts Council of Wales, Wales Arts International and the British Council] they instigated a number of internationally biased residencies and exhibitions in the atmospheric 200yr old Victorian Laundry Building that houses tactileBOSCH in Cardiff. [a-n Magazine c.2005 / www.a-n.co.uk
Hybrid Artists:
Heather Barnett
Heather Barnett is an artist interested in biological systems and scientific processes. With interests ranging across medicine, psychology, perception and visualisation, projects have included microbial portraiture, cellular wallpapers, performing cuttlefish and organic edible installations. She has exhibited widely in both art galleries and science museums; including the V&A, the Science Museum, and has work in the permanent collection of The Wellcome Trust. She has been Artist in Residence in diverse institutions including hospital pathology departments, satellite mapping companies and academic research laboratories.
Myrtle Clark Bremer
The stimulus for Clark Bremer's work for many years has been images from a hidden world, glimpsed only by the use of technologies employed in biology and medicine. Her explorations have led her from the intricate, paradoxically complex architecture of microscopic plankton, to the structure of the human body revealed by CAT and MRI scanners. In particular, she has had a poignant relationship with images of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, an organ implicated in her own recent illness.
Mandee Gage
Hybrid was set up by Gage in 1998 to create links with other interdisciplinary practitioners. Gage's interest in science falls broadly into the areas of bionomics, medical physics and genetics. Most of the work is concerned with physical and psychological health and its relation to the environment. in particular the breakdown of complex systems.
She periodically collaborates with scientists, employing both craft techniques and new technology within her work. Gage has frequently worked with clay and plaster in casting bodies, but she utilizes many materials and methods including body scanning, rapid prototyping, sound and video. Gage is also involved in research into the effect sound may have on people's states of mind and their health and the impacts of changing climate, in particular our relationship with water. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally in France and Australia.
David Jane
Jane calls his work self-portraiture, albeit of a unique, and at first disturbing, kind. Wax surfaces bleed away to reveal other surfaces beneath. In 1989 Jane contracted herpes simplex encephalitis, which severely damaged his left temporal lobe, affecting his everyday memory, naming and reading ability but his artistic skills remained unaffected. David had established a critical reputation as an artist exploring ideas of biography and abstraction, after his illness, he looked at his brain scans in an attempt to understand what had happened to him.
"When you look at David Jane's work." Says Denna Jones, curator at the London-based Wellcome Centre for Medical Science, "your reactions aren't anything to do with the disease. It's simply a continuation of self-portraiture - part of a tradition five centuries old." If the 18th-century painter William Hogarth had had access to the technology Jane's uses, "he'd probably have done the same thing," says Jones."
Angela Rumble
Rumble originally trained as a dentist and works part time in general practice. She combines the two fields and this experience is reflected in the subject matter of her work. Much of this investigates the relationship between doctor and patient. Using images taken from medical textbooks the paintings seek to question the way in which medical models of representation have traditionally excluded images of equality and emancipation. Such images exclude any hint of personality and it is this sense of alteration when placed in the role of patient, which fascinates and intrigues her.
Guest Artists:
Andrew Cooper
Cooper's work has evolved from a broad and diverse palette of influences including literature, music, film, as well as architecture and painting. A fascination with visual optical illusions, time, perceived space and consequence are predominant factors in his latest works and evoke a dynamic relationship between the viewer, the object and the immediate space. The human figure has recently become more central to Cooper's work, as he felt the need to create an engagement with narratives of emotion and life. He has produced several installations that explore, not reflections in a mirror so much as the notion of continuity beyond the mirror.
David Cushway
Cushway explores many dimensions of clay: its qualities for building and disintegrating, and its ability to record both immediately and over a period of time. He has cast the summit of a mountain (Snowdon) and replaced the floor of his studio with wet tiles to record all activity in the room. He has also grown bacteria on his work so that the piece became a living entity.
Alexa Wright
Alexa Wright is a visual artist working with photography and interactive digital media. Her work uses new technologies to investigate the expression of human identity and to interrogate the conventional boundaries between art, science and technology.
Alexa's recent works include Opera Interna (2005) a series of nine digitally manipulated portraits of opera singers that explore the performative nature of human expression; and Cover Story (2006), a video installation investigating the idea of the face as interface between self and world , commissioned for UK Science Week (Norwich), 2006 . Alexa has worked collaboratively with numerous medical scientists, most consistently with Alf Linney, Professor of Medical Physics at University College London. Alexa and Alf's collaborative works include Alter Ego , a virtual mirror in which individual users interact with their own automatically created avatar. Alter Ego (2005) has been shown both nationally and internationally, most recently in FILE ‘07, SESI Art Gallery , Sao Paolo , Brazil and in ‘El cuerpo (con)sentido', Centro the Historia Zaragoza, Spain. Alexa and Alf's latest project, Conversation Piece , is an intelligent room that can converse with its occupants, creating a space for audience and machines to act as performers and observers in a real-time, live work. Conversation Piece was first shown at the ACM Multimedia Conference Interactive Arts Program, Augsburg, Germany in September 2007.
Alexa teaches at University of Westminster.
An-aesthetic is a ‘Hybrid' Exhibition Funded by the Arts Council Wales
tactleBOSCH Artist Led Space
Andrews Road, Cardiff CF14 2SP
t: 07951 256255 / 02920 384959
www.tactilebosch.org / www.hybrid-art.org
Further Information
Mandee Gage Elizabeth Machin
Curator, Elizabeth Machin PR
Tel: 07920 190849 Tel: 020 7503 3200
Email: mgage@blueyonder.co.uk Email: emachin@blueyonder.co.uk
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