In November 2007 Stefanie Reichelt started ArtCell Gallery which is located in the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute (CRUK CRI), in the heart of the scientific community of Cambridge. The institute carries out world-class research to improve our understanding of cancer and find out how to prevent, diagnose and treat different kinds of cancer. The exhibitions at ArtCell aim to bring art into the institute for Stefanie's colleagues, patients at Addenbrookes Hospital as well as the general public.
‘April is the Cruellest Month ...’
A new exhibition, ‘April is the Cruellest Month ...’ inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem The Wasteland, brings together artists and scientists at ArtCell Gallery. Combining cutting edge scientific cellular imaging and artistic vision, this show is an exploration and celebration of ‘dull roots’ with new potential.
Exhibition Opening Saturday 09 April 2011, 12pm-5pm –
download invitation.
The exhibition will be officially opened at 3pm by Councillor Sheila Stuart, the Mayor of Cambridge.
©Cinnamon Heathcote-Drury, all rights reserved
International fine artist and portrait photographer, Cinnamon Heathcote-Drury presents a photographic collection of whole plant and vegetable specimens known to be vested with beneficial healing properties. Enormously enlarged and displayed as black and white architectural forms, this monumental series invites us to look closer at the extraordinary variety of shape, texture and contour that these vegetables offer in their natural state, when usually found supplied to the UK in powdered or dried form. Heathcote-Drury's style pays tribute to Karl Blossfeldt's simple, anatomical hedgerow specimens from the 1920s, shot in large format monochrome, using natural light and without crop to enhance impact or effect. They are dispassionate records, not necessarily beautiful yet highly arresting, offering an almost 3-dimensionality via the choice of depth of field, and rich in tone resembling ancient etchings.
Heathcote-Drury also displays new work from her expanding series of colour portraits, in which women from all over the world present themselves to the camera, holding vegetables as flower arrangements or offerings. Although displayed for exhibition, the models purposefully defy the viewer's gaze by shielding the specifics of their age and identity, via the concealment of their own hair. Some face us, some face away, but this is only fully realised on close examination: they demand our attention and consideration, revealing something of their gender and genetic difference, but only that which we can presume, without actually seeing, knowing or touching. They are selected for ArtCell in celebration of their femininity and vitality, but also with an acute awareness that chemotherapy temporarily strips this featured individuality from women – that of their hair – during cancer treatment.
All images are available for purchase, strictly limited editions size 50x50cms or 100x100cms. Part of the series ‘Spice of Eden’ was introduced by Michael Palin, and displayed at Royal Geographic Society in conjunction with Kate Humble's talk on Spice, Feb 2011; & at Cinnamon Kitchen in Bishopsgate 2010-11.
By contrast, Stefanie Reichelt offers a closer look at nature's construction of vegetables and fruit. MRI scans of plant material, kiwi fruit and other vegetables are displayed as small video pieces taking us on a microscopic journey through the eye of technology. Reichelt is both an artist in her own right and a leader in the field of scientific imaging and light microscopy, carrying out world-class research to improve our understanding of cancer.
©Stefanie Reichelt, all rights reserved
Going one step further, Jim Haseloff and Fernan Federici's amazing prints of fluorescent protein labelled transgenic plants, stained whole-mounts and 3D reconstructions of plant cell anatomy, offer an other-worldly beauty to contemporary microscopic cellular plant examination. Various staining techniques are used to label DNA, proteins, carbohydrates etc., and the digital controls of a confocal microscope allow for the clean separation of different fluorescent emission signals and the balancing of signal levels in different channels, leading to the production of images with intense clarity and colour.
Based in the Department of Plant Sciences at Cambridge University, the Haseloff Laboratory is pioneering synthetic biology, and has constructed a series of tools for controlling gene misexpression, and marking specific cells in growing plants. The lab is building a new generation of genetic circuits that incorporate intercellular communication, and could be used to generate self-organised behaviour at the cellular scale. These kind of circuits and cell-cell interactions play a key role in plant development and morphogenesis, and synthetic circuits will allow bold new approaches to reprogramming plant systems.
Synthetic Biology is an emerging field that employs engineering principles for constructing genetic systems. The approach is based on the use of well-characterised and reusable components, and numerical models for the design of biological circuits.
©Haseloff Lab, all rights reserved
More images can be found here. Two of Fedirici's images have recently been selected for the Wellcome Image Awards 2011.
Andrea Baczynski explores plants and their mystery via underexposed black and white prints. These brooding images offer space for intense psychological connections.
In her series The Nature of Light, Baczynski worked with plants and the light waves bending around obstacles. She continues her fascination with nature through this visual exploration of lines and structures. The greeneries are exempted from all naturalness through the conversion into black and white. In this way the plants are reduced into the most minimalistic elements – pure lines. As a result the pure form of plants are highlighted and revealed.
©Andrea Baczynski, all rights reserved