Transience - Susan Aldworth

This solo exhibition, Transience, presented by the Blythe Gallery at Imperial College London, includes ground-breaking work by the artist Susan Aldworth as she continues her investigations into the relationship between mind and body. Since 1999, Aldworth, an experimental print and film-maker who combines digital photography and state-of-the-art medical imagery in her work, has explored the depths of consciousness and the transience of self. Her persistent fascination with the physical brain has led to a new body of work which has evolved using techniques from the most traditional to the more radical, as shown in this exhibition. In Transience Aldworth explores the brain as matter and has made a suite of prints – a historical first – etching directly from human brain tissue.

Susan Aldworth has spent time in operating theatres and dissecting rooms, watching the most delicate medical procedures from which she has drawn inspiration — painting and sketching in a way similar to how we imagine the Old Masters discovered more about human anatomy. Her residency at the Royal London Hospital, where she observed brain scans and other digital imaging processes, has led to her focusing on the brain, which, for the last twelve years has been the starting point for much of her work. Adapting imagery from scans and EEGs, Susan Aldworth has sought to picture this idea of self, and to give us illuminating visual metaphors for the unfathomable mysteries of human consciousness.