Changing Perspectives exhibitions

In the Big Issue this week....

Science and art – not enemies after all.

Image: Untitled future mutation by Luke Jerram

Two exhibitions open in Bristol this April make it clear that the debate over the ‘two cultures’ of science and art should be long gone. With a range of stunning science-inspired art, the University of Bristol’s Changing Perspectives series shows that while art and science interrogate the world in different ways, they both overlap and push each other in exciting, new directions. From delicate virus particles hand-blown in glass and the personal reflections of medical students confronted by dying patients to haunting drawings of the Alps’ fading glaciers, these exhibitions and the accompanying talks and events bring to light the fascinating work that emerges when artists and scientists get together.

In the Grant Bradley Gallery on Bedminster parade the Changing Perspectives exhibition is inspired by the body. It includes international artist Luke Jerram’s transparent glass viruses that provoke questions about the global impact of virus-borne disease, and research images taken with an eye for the aesthetic that open up microscopic worlds of crawling cells and flowering moulds. Work by medical students, for example the stunning centrepiece by student Rachel Handley, questions the role of the doctor in helping to support a dying patient, while reciprocally, work by patients calls on doctors of the future to see, hear and touch their patients with compassion. You would not be the first to leave the Gallery with a lump in your throat.

The art-science smorgasbord doesn’t end there. A second exhibition at the Bristol Gallery, also part of Changing Perspectives, makes tangible the complex and often abstract worlds of mathematics, physics, chemistry and physical geography. Find out what makes researchers tick through photographic portraits and films, how the equations that describe chaotic systems can be captured in crochet and steel, and what a nano-brush for a nano-dog might look like...

A series of free, public evening events accompany the exhibitions; this week sees two talks - artist Emma Stibbon and glaciologist Giles Brown discussing the fragility and changing nature of our natural environment, and a composites engineer and artist getting to grips with ‘Inspired Engineering’.

Both exhibitions are open until the end of April. More information at bristol.ac.uk/changingperspectives

The Grant Bradley Gallery - 1 St Peter’s Court, Bedminster Parade, BS3 4AQ. Monday – Saturday 10 am – 5 pm

The Bristol Gallery – Millennium Promenade, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5TY. Mon – Fri 10 am – 6 pm; Sat – Sun 10 am – 5 pm.