“Polymath: a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning” –
Oxford Dictionary
The contemporary gallery GV Art explores and acknowledges the inter-relationship between art and science, and how the areas cross over and inform one another. GV Art’s latest exhibition brings together ‘polymath’ works that create synergies and connect disparate ideas and different schools of thoughts. From David Marron’s Nervous Tissue installation, to Susan Aldworth’s Reassembling the Self lithographs (below), to Rachel Gadsden, whose Unlimited Global Alchemy will be presented as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Reassembling the Self , a new suite of 14 lithographs by Susan Aldworth made at the Curwen Studio under the guidance of the legendary master printer Stanley Jones, is the culmination of her artist residency at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University, working on a collaborative project with patients and scientists to piece together some of the narratives that inform the diagnosis and experiences of schizophrenia. Aldworth will show two of these new works for the first time at Polymath.
As co-curator Dr Jonathan Hutt observes, ‘A polymath doesn’t look at what is there but uses existing knowledge to create something new and dynamic’. ‘The polymath is almost a discipline in itself’, explains David Marron. ‘It aids a sensibility in attaining a reasoned level of thought.’
The most famous polymath is, of course, Leonardo da Vinci, who personified the concept of ‘Renaissance Humanism’ — which held that, to realise their full potential, a human had to acquire the widest spectrum of knowledge — and was the ultimate ‘Renaissance Man’. But other polymaths have shaped the evolution of the world throughout history, including Aristotle (384-322BC), Galileo Galilei (1564-1624) and Steve Jobs (1955-2011).
Below is one of my favourites by Katharine Dowson using light reactive lenses inside acrylic to form fragmented ice-like blocks, with circular shadows which change as the sun hits them.
Artists: Susan Aldworth, Andrew Carnie, Annie Cattrell, Katharine Dowson, Rachel Gadsden, David Marron, Dan Peyton, Helen Pynor and Nina Sellars, curated by Robert Devcic and Dr Jonathan Hutt
24th February — 14th April 2012, GV Art Gallery, 49 Chiltern Street, Marylebone, London W1U 6LY
Words Nicola Anthony
Images Courtesy of GV art and the artists. From Top: Susan Aldworth, Susan Aldworth, Andrew Carnie, Nina Sellars, Dan Peyton, Katharine Dowson, Katharine Dowson.
