About the Exhibition -  ”Corpus Philosophorum”

   “We inhabit polluting bodies. We may imagine that we are a network of hermetic systems, both closed & contained, but at every moment our corporeality invades our shared social spaces. We continually shed flakes of skin and hair that drift on currents of air, ready to be inhaled by, and settle upon, those around us. We have aqueous seepage from our eyes when the sun blinds us, or we are overcome with emotion. We sweat with exertion. Our bodies process the raw material of the world then dispose of the waste; as solids, as liquids, or as gaseous particulates. Our time becomes marked by fluid leavings of blood, semen, milk, pus, and saliva. Often these processes are healthy and natural, but just as frequently they are signifiers of infection, sickness and disease. We cough or sneeze moist and invisible miasmic clouds of mucus, teeming with bacteria. Our bodies are vessels for countless microbes and parasites waiting to jump ship and travel to our companions. And when the world poisons us, we suffer paroxysms of nauseous and noxious emesis.

   Our absence is marked by traces, and fluids & flakes are the record of our passage. There is not a moment in our lives when these materials are not polluting our environment and in direct contact with those around us. We emit, we excrete, we secrete... we eject, evacuate, eliminate, expel, exude and leak.

While the works in this exhibition are inspired by anatomical illustration, they are not about the body. Rather they use the body and its systems as an analogue to reflect on ideology and philosophy. They are allegories used to ruminate upon our passions, thoughts, and actions; both in cause and effect. To think about the ideas we digest, the words we speak, and the results of our choices upon the world. Even in our absence we leave parts of us, and our passage through life can exert a profound influence on the world around us. What we leave can be healthy & human, or it can be malignant, sick and communicable. The works are open-ended. They make no pronouncements, offer no hypotheses, and come to no conclusions. They are merely a series of questions.

In this series, anatomy becomes a symbolic way to examine our social and cultural experiences; bodies of history, bodies of knowledge, and the body politic. The resulting works invoke an alternative history of medical textbook diagrams and anatomical charts. The histrionic nature of these images, with exaggerated forms and impossible anatomies, allows for new ways to observe and dissect the world.” Darcy Logan/Frater Tham