Two exhibitions
dal 21/7/2004 al 22/8/2004
Segnalato da
21/7/2004
Two exhibitions
Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast
Amanda McKittrick, Visceral Knowledge: many of the images in Visceral Knowledge have been photographed from the original manuscript plates in historical atlases of anatomy and pathology. The original act of drawing from life has been retraced on the computer, lifting these images out of their original context, providing the opportunity to explore our shared fear and fascination of our inner body. Sharon Kelly, The Tears of Things, an entirely new body of work by Belfast based artist Sharon Kelly, based on the social / communal significance of the former Jubilee Maternity Hospital.
Amanda McKittrick Visceral Knowledge
Many of the images in Visceral Knowledge have been photographed from the original manuscript plates in historical atlases of anatomy and pathology. The original act of drawing from life has been retraced on the computer, lifting these images out of their original context, providing the opportunity to explore our shared fear and fascination of our inner body.
All of the work has been produced using digital technology. Scanned electron microscope images that allow us to see blood cells in minute detail sit alongside life-sized pinhole photographs of dissected bodies dissolving into darkness. McKittrick's work confronts us with the presences of many artists and many lenses through which the images are filtered. When we look at an image we are always seeing through someone else's eyes.
We are looking at medical images but the authority of the institution is stripped away. The objectivity of the images is unsettled by their removal from a medical context. We are no longer looking at ‘the' body but a particular body. We are never allowed the whole picture, small circles or partial bodies emerge from darkness, even with the minute detail of the electron microscope we are faced with what we cannot see.
Visceral Knowledge has been funded through an Engaging Science Award from the Wellcome Trust. The work in this exhibition has been produced during Amanda McKittrick's research Fellowship in the Anatomy Department of the School of Medicine at Queens University Belfast.
Amanda McKittrick has worked as artist in residence at Maghaberry Prison, The Orchard Gallery and the V&A in London. She studied film and photography at Sheffield Hallam University and was awarded a doctorate by the University of Ulster. She has exhibited her individual and collaborative work widely. Her previous work has explored childhood cancer and biomedical imaging techniques.
Exhibition opening – Thursday 22 July 2004, 7-9pm @ OBG
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Sharon Kelly The Tears of Things
The Tears of Things is an entirely new body of work by Belfast based artist Sharon Kelly, based on the social / communal significance of the former Jubilee Maternity Hospital. The project aims to acknowledge and mark in some way the wealth of human experience with which the hospital was associated by considering the significance of the Jubilee Maternity Hospital for those who gave birth there, those who worked in its service and those who were born there.
The work for The Tears of Things has been made entirely in response to numerous meetings and conversations with former staff of the hospital, parents, those born in the hospital and from personal experience, and comprises three inter-related elements:
Kelly has produced a series of life size drawings featuring the uniforms of the former staff of the hospital. The uniforms range from those worn in the distant past to the most recent, worn for the last shift at the jubilee. Others images include a nurses paper hat and items of infant clothing. Drawn from intimate observation, segments of these objects have been rendered in details – threads, seams, stains. The remainder is left un-worked and open.
The artist has created a series of photographs featuring various symbols for marking experience and concerned with physical space, some of which exists now only in memory.
The central feature of the video work is the preparation of the nurses uniform. Further video sequences revolve around the preparation of and putting on / taking off of uniforms belonging to those who worked in the hospital.
The initial idea for the project began when the artist witnessed the demolition of the hospital in May 2001. Further ideas were developed over the intervening period, with the help of the Bass Ireland Award (awarded Nov. 2001) and the Arts Council Northern Ireland grant awarded in April 2004.
Exhibition opening – Thursday 22 July 2004, 7-9pm @ OBG
* The exhibition opens on Thursday 22 July 2004 from 7pm – 9pm, and runs until Saturday 28 August 2004, Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00am – 6.00pm. ENTRANCE FREE.
Rachel Kennedy, Gallery Administrator
Tel: + (028) 9032 1402 / Fax: + (028) 9031 2232
Ormeau Baths Gallery
18A Ormeau Avenue
Belfast BT2 8HS