20 May 08

The 2,000 year old mummy from the Ashmolean Museum was carefullly put through a CT scanner

Angela Palmer’s exhibition Unravelled is unique because of the highly unusual techniques that she has developed over the past few years. In July 2006, Angela put the mummy through a CT scanner at the MRI unit of the John Radcliffe Hospital to find out what was under the bandages.

Little was known about the 3ft mummy before the scans. It was excavated by a British archaeologist in 1888 and housed in the Ashmolean Museum. However, after the scanning it was discovered to be a boy aged between four and seven and radiologists are still studying the cause of his death.

The project combines art, medical science and archaeology: it is a collaboration between Oxford University medical scientists who are also radiographers at the John Radcliffe hospital; the University's Ashmolean Museum; and Angela Palmer, who has created a glass artwork based on the scan.

The inspiration for Ms Palmer’s work came from the Nobel Laureate Dorothy Hodgkin, who in the mid 1940s drew the contour images of the penicillin molecule on separate horizontal sheets of Perspex to create a 3D representation. Ms Palmer, who lives in Oxford, realised that if she drew slices of the head and body on multiple sheets of glass and presented them on a vertical plane she could create a three-dimensional work showing the internal architecture of the human form.

Angela Palmer said: ‘Over the past two years I have watched the child’s body slowly and intriguingly turn into a three-dimensional shape in my studio using details from the 2,500 scans from the John Radcliffe. I began to feel an eerie closeness to the child and felt compelled to visit the tomb where he had lain for nearly 2,000 years before being taken to Oxford.’

The scans have also been used to produce plaster replicas of the boy’s skull and toes.

Cavendish Imaging, a medical imaging and modelling company, applied techniques normally used in surgical planning, to recreate this dead child from another age. These will be displayed but are not for sale and will be given to the Ashmolean Museum after the exhibition ends.

The exhibition, including more than 20 works of art by Angela Palmer, will show at Waterhouse & Dodd in London’s Cork Street from 21 May to 12 June 2008.