Contemporary Art New York

Angela Palmer

Scottish (Born 1957)

Life Lines 24 May - 15 June 2012, London

Unravelled 21 May-12 June 2008, London

Angela Palmer is an Oxford based sculptor and installation artist. The works illustrated are derived from MRI and CT scans of bodies, both human and animal. The artist interprets these scans in delicate drawings or engravings on glass, which hint at the fragility of life.

“Angela Palmer’s increasingly ambitious work reflects a fascination with how medical scanning techniques can be used to create alternative representations of the body and of our perception of identity. At the heart of her practice is a kind of intuitive personal research involving collaborations with, amongst others, scientists, engineers and archaeologists. There are many stories along the way and often the possibility of a new direction to be explored, giving her work an energy and generosity.

It was when studying at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford in 2003 that Palmer was inspired by a model she came across made by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Dorothy Hodgkin. A few thick black lines drawn on parallel sheets of Perspex created a ‘stunning three-dimensional map’ of the structure of Penicillin.

Since then, using CT and MRI scans of both her head and body Palmer has created a number of works in which she is the subject, though they are not recognisable portraits. The individual scans are hand-engraved or drawn on sheets of non-reflective glass. The sheets are then displayed together, creating an image built up from the lines of each delicate cross-section. The image only becomes visible if viewed from certain angles. From above and from the side it vanishes; there is nothing there but sheets of glass held on a glass or wooden base.” Andrew Nairne,Director, Modern Art Oxford

Angela Palmer - CV