Art in isolation: artistic responses to Covid-19
Early artistic responses to Covid-19 offer fascinating insights into key issues arising from the crisis, argue ART/DATA/HEALTH researchers Elodie Marandet, Harriet Barratt, and Aristea Fotopoulou.
Set Menu (His and Hers)
Artist Dawn Woolley finds inspiration in the work of Audrey Amiss, held by Wellcome Library.
Sculpting Anxious Bodies
How is the relationship between private illness and public spectacle negotiated within the context of contemporary art? Poet Alice Hill Woods and artist Emelia Kerr Beale explore how fine art practices can reshape our engagement with, and understanding of, mental health issues.
#CompulsiveCharcoal
Liz Atkin is a visual artist, educator, and mental health advocate. Her work, which has recently been acquired by Wellcome Collection, explores the lived experience of compulsive skin-picking, a body-focused repetitive behaviour disorder. Fiona Johnstone, visual culture editor at The Polyphony, visited Atkin in her studio in south London.
Art in dialogue: Visibility and Voice Beyond illness
Shanali Perera is a self-taught digital artist based in Manchester, and advocate for the use of creativity to cope with long-term conditions. She took up digital art following early retirement due to a rare
“INTIMACY, ACTIVISM, and AIDS”: Exhibition Review
Ilaria Grando responds to Tate Modern’s new display, “Intimacy, Activism, and AIDS”. Two things capture my attention as I enter “Intimacy, Activism, and AIDS” at Tate Modern: one, the intimidating emptiness of the centre
Artists’ Books and Multisensory Experience: Reflections on Teaching a Visual Medical Humanities
Stella Bolaki explores the benefits of using artists’ books in medical humanities education, and argues that the affective and sensory properties of the form allow it to mediate embodied experiences of illness more directly than literary narratives.
Pilgrimage to/of the heart: exhibition review ‘The Heart of the Matter’
In anticipation of the opening of ‘narrative cardiology’ exhibition The Heart of the Matter at the Copeland Gallery in London in November, Wendy Lowe reviews this summer’s Bristol installation of the show (The Heart of
Taking a Visual Turn
Associate Editor Fiona Johnstone writes about being an art historian in the medical humanities, and proposes some future directions for increased visual engagement in the field. As an art historian, I am often the sole