GAIL
THEIS
I'm interested in natural sciences, life and death, the way things interact with each other and interconnect.
Christine Borland
I learned of Christine Borland’s work just after my first foray into my quilting in combination with human DNA, whilst attempting to link our basic physical structure to what human life is and means. Primarily, her focus on life and death from the scientific, medical and forensic prospective struck me as having some parallels with my practise, particularly her research into cell structure and the Human Condition.
She was exploring life and death in the 1990’s using guns and bullet holes, human bones, ailments of the body and forensic reconstruction of faces using skulls as a way to recreate a dead person. She also explored love, nurturing and comfort; these home and family-induced human needs and emotions, and in particular an installation of piled up blankets entitled Lifetime of Love.
Lifetime of Love
Devil's in the Making
She examines all the structures that support life; bones, blood vessels, cell structure, DNA.
Most of these things are hidden or microscopic; invisible to the naked eye. Human understanding of our bodies is in augmented by the constant refinement of the scientific knowledge.
She has intensively worked alongside medical scientists, including work on donated organs and donor transplantation. She has found ways through her art to communicate her knowledge and understanding in a way that lay people can understand, and so humanising quite complicated questions through her art.