Life of Bone: Art Meets Science

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Life of bone brings into sharp relief, and interrogates, the abutting practices of art and science, which have co-existed since the beginning of our species. It is based on an exhibition, scheduled to openin May 2011 at the Origins Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand. This exhibition will display the original fossil skull of the Taung child hominid alongside artworks by Joni Brenner, Gerhard Marx, and Karel Nel, that were made specifically in response to these evolutionarily significant remains. This unique combination of paleoanthropological finds and art prompts a range of enquiries on the nature of both artistic and scientific disciplines, and encourages a dialogue between the very distant historic and the contemporary.

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Joni Brenner, whose work has been in the field of portraiture, turned a few years ago to working from a human skull that she has in her studio, and from which she makes watercolor studies on an almost daily basis. Gerhard Marx works with skulls, star maps, and root systems—objects and imagery that all point to fragmented ways of knowing. Karel Nel works with earth collected from specific regions or sites around the globe. He uses this matter to explore notions of deep time and the forensic information encoded within the formless substance.