Art - Corpus - Page 2

Humanising clinical spaces: art in hospitals

13 August 2018 6 Comments

Christine Mulligan

Life often takes us us on divergent twists and turns. Sometimes, surprisingly, all these different paths come together to make coherent sense. My own journey has taken me to architecture, nursing, art and art history. Together, these disciplines have led me to understand the importance of humanising clinical and institutional spaces.

‘Peninsula Hills’ by Neil Grant, Stoneware and clay, 1984. Sited at entrance to the Dunedin Public Hospital.

In 1972, Professor of Surgery Alan Clarke initiated the Dunedin Hospital art collection. He was responding to medical literature about the benefits of original art in hospitals, and to his positive personal experience of art in hospitals overseas. The Art Advisory Committee was formed, with the goal of populating the walls and corridors of Dunedin and Wakari hospitals with original artwork. Clarke believed that original art by professional artists provided the best portrayals of ‘life and nature’’.

Many years later, my unusual multidisciplinary journey would connect me to Dr. Clarke’s vision. [Read more…] about Humanising clinical spaces: art in hospitals

‘Primary Care’: changing values on display

23 July 2018 Leave a Comment

Andrea Bell

Hocken Primary Care Robin White — Robin White in ‘Primary Care’ exhibition, image courtesy of Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago. Photo: Iain Frengley.

Primary Care is an exhibition currently showing at the Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena (Dunedin, New Zealand). It brings together a selection of artworks, photographs, ephemera and archival materials to consider aspects of physical, spiritual, community, mental and public health. The exhibition represents a range of approaches to health and wellbeing, and traces the history of developments in the medical field. It includes items relating to health promotion and disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, patient education, deinstitutionalisation, community care and Māori health.

Among the work on display is one of Dunedin Public Hospital’s most treasured artworks, borrowed for the exhibition: ‘Your Health is Your Wealth’ by Dame Robin White. [Read more…] about ‘Primary Care’: changing values on display

The revolutionary pencil

25 June 2018 3 Comments

Annette Rose

'Tremors' by Jilleen Brice. — ‘Tremors’ by Jilleen Brice.

There’s nothing remarkable about a pencil, one would think. But simply by drawing off the page and over the edges of the desk and along the floor and up the walls and out the window and off over the fields, a person can draw a new horizon to aspire to … who knows how radical a doodle can be? Drawing can be a revolutionary act.

My sister has recently taken up that revolutionary pencil. She used to draw and take photographs but life’s demons had dragged her down and she had not done so since the 1970s. Now, however, despite a body crippled by multiple sclerosis (the “glass half-full” kind, slowly progressing), a mental state depleted by depression and chronic post-traumatic stress, and a spirit broken by 30,000 earthquakes (she lives in Christchurch), every day she manages to get up and settle at the kitchen table to do her ‘Arting’, as she calls it. As Franz Kafka wrote:

You do not have to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You do not even have to listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked …”

Taonga for learning: the Otago Medical School Anatomy Museum

28 May 2018 Leave a Comment

Louisa Baillie

The W. D. Trotter Anatomy Museum at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, contains a collection that is truly a confluence of science and the humanities. The museum houses over 3,000 catalogued anatomy specimens and models in an elegant space whose warm aesthetics include diffuse natural lighting, wooden framed glass cabinets and rimu stairs leading to a mezzanine floor.

The models themselves are works of art as well as teachers of science. They include wax models by the Ziegler and Tramond studios, 77 authentic painted plaster models by the Leipzig firm of Steger, clastique papier-mache´models by Louis Auzoux’s factory, as well as many in-house wet and plastinated specimens, and models made of fibreglass, wax and even hand-carved wood.

Elegant feet and gentle noses: anatomical drawing and personhood

30 October 2017 2 Comments

Monica Carroll and Adam Dickerson

A description of a collaboration between a writer (Monica Carroll) and a philosopher (Adam Dickerson).

Through Husserl’s phenomenology we explored the idea of forms of writing that could be coherent with lived experience and with an experience of the body. We found that specialised forms of description, such as anatomical description, shaped and portrayed some parts of lived experience while leaving others parts unspoken. Our explorations in this field produced an artists’ book of loose-leaf folios that point towards unspoken areas of the body, both animated and lifeless.

Anatomy nesting dolls

11 September 2017 1 Comment

Kezia Field

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” Leonardo da Vinci

For years, as as an art educator and artist, I’ve had an ongoing preoccupation with body parts, especially with anatomical systems and human organs as artistic imagery. This fascination has lead me to research a variety of vintage anatomical illustrations by scientific and medical artists such as Georg Stubbs, William Braune, Nicolas Henri Jacob, Anton Nuhn and Leonardo da Vinci.

These illustrators were professional artists with advanced education in both the life sciences and visual communication. I like the idea that these artists collaborated with scientists and physicians, and that they transformed complex visual information into visual images with potential to communicate to broad audiences. As digital photography and other digital media have come to dominate the medical illustration world, the demand for these artists has declined. So, I say to myself, perhaps my art can fill this void.