Christine Borland

Christine Boreland is an artists that look at anatomy and the human condition to influence her art. At first my attention was drawn to her by her use of anatomy and representation although it tends to quite clinical rather than theatrical which is what im interested in, however for Jack Pierce's classic representation of Frankenstein it is known that he looked at anatomy of the human skull to influence his design. It may therefore be no coincident that Boreland has also taken reference from the same novel to influence her ideas.

The work that I am interested in however is called spirit collection(1999) which to me has resonance with the Haitian spirit bottles. I think although they do not look aesthetically similar its ideas of representation of a person are. Boreland's work is based on science and genetics, inside each glass tear-drop is a leaf that has been bleached white. The significance of the leaf is that it is descended from a tree is Kos under which Hippocrates, the father of medicine, first taught his students. There are many further levels of meaning applied to the work such as the idea of cloning and originals, the family-'tree' is being represented as ghostly and delicate like its originality is fading. The artist also considered the connections between the family tree and genetic diseases, each spirit is only left as skeletal remains.

www.artnet.com - Spirit Bottles review

 www.nationalgalleries.org - Spirit Bottles review