12 May 08

'Lab' by Anna Lucas

Anna Lucas, artist in residence in Oxford University’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics, is bringing together art and science through Land of Silence and Darkness  - a series of lectures held between 14 and 17 May.

She will display and discuss the research she has worked on during her residency, which was developed in collaboration with the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and supported by the Wellcome Trust. She has also invited a number of speakers to discuss this theme.

Ms Lucas’ research is inspired by the act of ‘blind drawing’ various movies, primarily three scenes in Werner Herzog’s documentary Land of Silence and Darkness about a deaf and blind woman communicating through touch.

Each work is drawn continuously for the duration of a film, onto a single sheet of paper covered with carbon paper. The drawings become a tangle of marks, a material representation of the time and formal and emotional density of the movie.

Ms Lucas said: ‘Exploring beyond my temporary “studio”, an old dissection theatre, I have had encounters with a perceptual neuroscientist, an expert on Diderots’ Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those who can See, and Peter Mann who made a documentary about his father who is a blind painter. I have drawn lab mice and human eye cavities, witnessed the extraction of fragments of DNA and discussed the nature of experimentation with lab-based scientists and film writer Silke Panse.

‘The neuroscientist asks “What is the essence of visual processing?”, and explores this question through a very different process than Werner Herzog's documentary cameraman filming blind twins exploring Vietnam.

‘I’m bringing together these visionaries into some of Oxford’s significant art and science locations to perform, converse, and present their ideas about seeing. I have blind faith that this convergence of minds and views will generate fascinating insights into how we capture and process images.’

Ms Lucas is mainly known for her film work but as part of her recent practice she has experimented with the moment of drawing, creating rules and structures as a way of exploring the balance between instinct and intellect.

Her solo shows include ‘Adrift’ at London’s Chisenhale Gallery; ‘Paloma Ceffyl’ at One Severn Street, Birmingham; at Bud at Spike Island, Bristol; and at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne. She is currently working with Commissions East on a new work in Essex and Virginia for screening in Spring 2008.