[NetBehaviour] Panacea

[marc]

*Panacea
**Michael Pinsky, Zoë Walker* & *Neil Bromwich
*26 July - 10 September 2005

Private View - Monday 25 July, 6.00 - 7.30pm, Artist's Talk  6.30pm
*/
Panacea: the art of wellbeing/* is an artist-led collaboration by *Neil 
Bromwich, Zoë Walker* and *Michael Pinsky*. Touring internationally, the 
project will be launched in the UK for the first time at the* John 
Hansard Gallery.
*
*/Panacea/* is an evolving, expandable and travelling artwork, designed 
to function as a universal formula to cure social, economic and 
political problems. Striking a fine balance between naïve optimism and 
ironic critique, the artists have created a thought-provoking and 
humorous comment on society's increasingly untenable expectation of the 
artist as social reformer, economic revitaliser and catalyst for all 
things good.
 
At the core of the project is a model of a fantasy Health Park, which is 
constructed from medical packaging and bandages - offering both generic 
and specific solutions to health and lifestyle problems. The model will 
change and develop during the tour, acting as a microcosm that reflects 
the whole project. Developed from this model are number of artworks 
including: */Friendly Frontier/* by *Walker* & *Bromwich*, an 11-metre 
long, hand-sewn, inflatable mountain range that acts as a buoyancy aid 
for countries in conflict, with emergency slides to bridge international 
borderlines, */Life Pulse/*, by *Michael Pinsky*, a sculpture that 
registers and illuminates visitors' heartbeats to create ever-changing 
rhythms and patterns of light. Echoing the medical methods of checking 
one's health through monitoring the heart rate, */Life Pulse,/* with its 
clean, clinical aesthetic, can be used by visitors to check their state 
of health on arrival and compare it with their increased wellbeing on 
departure.  
 
Full of subtleties and surprises, */Panacea/* is a pioneering 
trans-disciplinary project that will reach out to audiences well beyond 
existing contemporary art enthusiasts. Combining medical approaches with 
artistic propositions, this exhibition poses to holistically change the 
texture of culture, acting as a catalyst for social and political change 
to create a state of wellbeing.

*/Panacea/* has recently received a major National Touring Award from 
Arts Council England.

*For further information, please contact Nicky Balfour **' 023 8059 4661
7 023 8059 4192 * njb at soton.ac.uk
**
*John Hansard Gallery
University of Southampton
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
023 8059 2158
info at hansardgallery.org.uk
www.hansardgallery.org.uk

* *

*Michael Pinsky, /Life Pulse, /2004. *Photo courtesy CCC, Tours* *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/attachments/20050718/a7f251bb/attachment.htm>