  Stendhal
Syndrome, named after the 19th century French novelist who is
said
to
have suffered from it, is a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid
heartbeat, dizziness, confusion, and even hallucinations, when an
individual is exposed to art.
The
exhibition Stendhal
Syndrome presents art that deals with medical intervention in
conditions far removed from the psychosomatic. And it attempts to do so
from two viewpoints: that of the patient and that of the medical
professional who has someone’s life in their hands—be they doctor,
nurse, or research scientist.
For
three
of the artists,
being a patient has been a lifeshaping experience. Jonathan
McBurnie,
Brad Nunn, and Eden St James
have each undergone
extensive medical procedures. Jonathan contracted leukaemia as a
teenager, Brad suffered a stroke as the after effect of a traumatic
accident, and Eden St James uses the artist's own body as a biological
experiment in gender change. These experiences are integral to their
art work.
Despite
being
diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in February 2003, Jonathan
McBurnie had his first art exhibition in April
2003. He
reports
that he spent the remainder of his chemotherapy treatment working
through ideas for his next exhibition via his journals from his
hospital bed, filling a total of 50 journals before the end of his
treatment in September 2003. His works in the present show demonstrate
a rich fantasy life in which his fight for survival is represented in
terms of superheroes combating evil within his lymphatic system.
.
Brad
Nunn says of his present works:
‘One
morning I got up,
had a
shower and fell down…. When I opened my eyes again the world had
changed. Brain surgery had taken place. Consciousness sheltered
somewhere at the ‘back of my mind’ and all I could do was
observe
the
tableau that was unfolding before my eyes. I was very, very confused.
In the drug-induced haze the walls rippled, faces appeared and
disappeared, the inanimate became animate. It is this experience that I
wish to focus on in the Apparatus works shown at George Petelin
Gallery’.
Hazel
Mary Cope’s work,
on the
other hand, derives
from experiences during a long career as a nursing sister. She has a
fascination with medical instruments and the history of her profession.
At her best, Cope objectifies instruments redolent of frightening
scenarios such as the ‘bone scraper’ by juxtaposing them against the
romance of historical nurses’ Coifes.
The
medical profession
often finds itself at a contentious interface of technology and the
public. The remaining artists in this show, Svenja Kratz,
Trish
Adams,
Alicia King, and André Brodyk,
like Eden St James, are
drawn to the
issues and techniques of medical science. As well as exploring bizarre
possibilities for our future, these artists try to make us acutely
aware of the ethical boundaries that present themselves, and have to be
negotiated, in the deployment of medical technology.
Biotechnology
in medical practice raises some of the most perplexing issues our
generation has to face. It is therefore natural that contemporary art
should engage with biotechnology on a range of levels. There are those
artists, such as Patricia Piccinini, who make art about a
biotechnological future, extrapolating on the paths and pitfalls
of biotech research and its commercialisation. And
there are
artists
who actually employ biotech nology—make
art out of living
organisms—for
example the party frock grown out of living fungi by Donna Franklin or
an extra ear grown out of his own cells by Stelarc. There are some
artists, such as Eduardo Kac, who sculpt the very structure of
genes to
produce works such as his famous glowing rabbit Alba.
Svenja
Kratz, an interdisciplinary Brisbane-based artist whose art
explores
the impact of new technologies on concepts of the self, other, and the
body, has worked with scientists at the Institute of Health and
Biomedical Innovation. In the present exhibition, her work is a kind of
lament in memory of Alice, an 11 year old girl whose bone cancer cells
taken in 1973 are now used widely in bio-experimentation. The other
four artists have al so
undertaken residencies
at medical research
centres and all have worked at SymbioticA, the bioart laboratory at the
University of Western Australia.
Trish
Adams has collaborated with scientists to transform stem
cells from
her
own blood into beating cardiac cells in vitro. In this exhibition she
documents, as artist in residence at the University of Queensland Brain
Institute, an exploration of the cognitive and navigational abilities
of the honey bee.
Eden
St James
incorporates performance,
objects, and the occasional live tissue sample, to, as St James says,
‘map
the body as it mutates f rom one stage
to the next both
internally and
externally’.
Alicia
King, who has used
human cells in some
of her work, here shows stills from a performance series based on
public vivisection. Dressed as her alter-ego ladylump, a hybrid
human/animal visionary, she locates her persona as somewhere between
executioner, scientist, gimp, and doctor. Another of her works relates
modern use of human tissue to the traditions of crypt robbery.
André
Brodyk’s work falls into the category he shares with Eduardo
Kac
called
Genetic art. In his installation at George Petelin Gallery, Brodyk uses
a live culture of genetically modified E.coli bacteria
to draw
a small
portrait of an ordinary middle-aged male. This portrait is visible
growing inside a Petri dish on a nutrient rich agar gel and also as a
DVD moving image. It shows signs of deterioration and regeneration in
condition over time.
Brodyk’s
work makes clear just
how
commonplace gene modification has become. Although the artist has no
formal training in biotechnology, he was able to engineer a novel gene
into the E.coli while working inside a laboratory
as his
studio. The
invented gene Brodyk uses to portray the battle between deterioration
and regeneration contains DNA from t he
human APOE4 gene, which is
associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
George
Petelin,
Oct. 2008
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