Output details

Art and the theatre of mind and body: how contemporary arts practice is re-framing the anatomo-clinical theatre

This article provides a survey of recent work by artists, including Ingham, that illuminates the relationship between the visual arts and anatomy, and offers critical appraisal of contemporary ideas surrounding the body in life, death and disease. Bringing historical representations into a present day context, Ingham suggests that contemporary artists engaging with the body, and the corresponding biomedical and architectural spaces where the body is investigated, are engendering innovative and challenging artworks that stimulate new relationships between art and anatomy. She cites a number of examples from key artists and references some of her own practice-based research, to posit that creative cross-fertilization provokes a discourse between mediated public perceptions of disease, death and the disposal of morbid remains, and the contemporary reality of biomedical practice. This is a dialogue that is complex, rich and diverse, and ultimately rewarding for both art and anatomy.

This special issue of the journal, devoted to the art-anatomy relationship, followed an international conference at the University of Oxford, January 2009, organized by The Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, where Ingham was a speaker. She was invited to write up her paper from the conference for the journal by its editors, Gillian Morriss-Kay and John Fraher. This was the first time a journal of anatomy, normally dedicated to matters dealing with gross anatomy and the workings of anatomical medical practice, focused on how art and anatomy inform and influence each other, both historically and in contemporary terms.