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154 results
  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Artists, activism and AIDS

| Lalita Kaplish

Posters by artists who turned their art into activism to support their communities and raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.

  • Article
  • Article

Divining the world through an artist’s almanac

| Amanda Couch

Amanda Couch's artists book, 'Huwawa in the Everyday: an almanac' is inspired by the entrail like folds of a medieval folding and its function as a guide for astrological divinations linking the body, health and the heavens. Like the original almanac her work is designed to be carried out into the wider world.

  • Article
  • Article

Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

| Anna Faherty

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

  • Article
  • Article

A reflection on art in a mental hospital

| Beth Hopkins

Artist Beth Hopkins explains how she used her experience of researching the Adamson Collection to create an embroidered wall hanging.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

How the city lives inside me

| MURUGIAH

Artist Murugiah illustrates his urban environment and the feelings of being consumed, falling, squeezed and trapped.

  • Article
  • Article

Daniel Regan on using photography to manage emotions

| Daniel Regan

Artist Daniel Regan manages his emotions and stays grounded through photography, allowing him to engage in the world around him.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Faces from the archives

| Sam Falconer

Meet some of the lesser-known but no less extraordinary figures in the history of medicine, through a series of original portraits.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Pum Dunbar’s living lessons

| Pum Dunbar

Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.

  • Article
  • Article

Breaking the rules of online dating

| Alex Green

Artists are taking on the trolls of Tinder and the gremlins of Grindr to question the limits of online dating.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Forensic sculpture and the uncannily human clay heads

| Lalita Kaplish

"There is a point when there are suddenly twice as many people in the class."

  • Article
  • Article

“Life and the universe change our plans”

| Lil SullivanThomas S G Farnetti

Artist Lil Sullivan returns to the printmaking workshop for the first time after her stroke, and uses broken and discarded everyday objects to create art.

  • Article
  • Article

Disability in the post-pandemic world

| Dolly SenPum Dunbar

Disabled people have suffered more than most during Covid-19, but there is still a chance to build a kinder society. Dolly Sen explores whether we will come together, or allow more brutal disparities to develop in the worsening recession.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

Transitioning and the family album

| Anthony Luvera

“It’s really hard to describe to people how you know you’re a man when those ways of describing masculinity to me aren’t true. You need to find your own.”

  • Article
  • Article

Who was Audrey Amiss?

| Elena Carter

Elena Carter introduces the vast collection left behind by artist Audrey Amiss, who documented her life in astonishing detail.

  • Article
  • Article

Lustmord and the three perspectives of murder

| Taryn Cain

Artist Jenny Holzer's work shines a light on the three perspectives of sexual murder: the victim, the perpetrator and the observer.

  • Article
  • Article

Louis Wain’s cryptic cats

| Bryony Benge-Abbott

Once famous for his quirky cat illustrations, today Louis Wain is often portrayed as a ‘psychotic’ artist whose illness can be mapped out through his drawings. Here Bryony Benge-Abbott takes a more rounded view.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the mind of Somewhere in Between’s curator, Laurie Britton Newell

| Gwendolyn Smith

The exhibition's curator shares her secrets.

  • Article
  • Article

Printing the body

| Julia Nurse

The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Badger culling and farmers’ mental health

| Diana Boyer

Artist Diana Boyer portrays a farmer's thoughts as she goes about her work in a high-risk area for bovine TB.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Meet the climate emergency

| Gwendolyn SmithThomas S G Farnetti

Find out what led Yinka Shonibare to create the compelling artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Dark Matter responds to ‘Epidemic threats and racist legacies’

| Dark Matter

Animated-collage artist Dark Matter brings his unique combination of live footage and archive imagery to respond to a text suggesting that the field of epidemiology emerged in the 19th century imbued with the doctrine of Western imperialism.

  • Article
  • Article

The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

  • Article
  • Article

Bringing biotech to the people

| Anna LewisDebbie Loftus

Amateur scientists have inspired all kinds of frightening scenarios, from Frankenstein’s monster to ‘The Fly’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. But it can be a force for good. Today’s DIYbio enthusiasts are having fun – and even making lucrative breakthrough discoveries.

  • Article
  • Article

Mary Bishop and the surveillant gaze

| Rose RuaneMary Bishop

Writer and artist Rose Ruane explores the paintings of Mary Bishop, created during a 30-year stay in a psychiatric hospital, which speak of constant medical surveillance and censorious self-examination.

  • Article
  • Article

The freedom to provoke

| Jamie HaleStephen Allwright

Jamie Hale talks to performer and director Emma Selwyn about the joy of creating work that celebrates, rather than suppresses, autistic behaviours.