
Luke Jerram, E. Coli (detail)
The human body. The human being. Expectation and convention might suggest, I suppose, that I talk about the aesthetic gaze as it is sculpturally focused on the human body. But I’ll slide sideways a bit, so that while the human body, the human being, is indeed the focus of work I want to talk about, there is nary a representation nor visual reference to the aforesaid anyway in sight. This is about the foreign invaders, those intrusions (intended or not) into and upon the body that, for the most part, fall into two distinct groups: viruses and bacteria and pathogens on the one (by-and-large unwelcome) side, and the oral medications we so increasingly consume to deal with myriad physiological and psychological maladies on the other. Viruses and bacteria and other pathogens are generally of the natural world, while medications are obviously no such things. The oppositions of the natural and the synthetic come into play here, but intentionally so, and I proffer by way of examples the work of two artists, Luke Jerram and Colleen Wolstenholme – one British and the other Canadian. Continue reading