Traditionally, when scientific research institutions try to communicate their work, they follow some long-trusted, designated pathways; they publish papers in scientific periodicals, they hold seminars, or organise conferences, inviting the scientific community to participate. The Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute chose another pathway – a 10-week artists’ residency.
“We decided to invite artists to come and take part in experiments and basically become members of the institute for a week,” says research assistant Lucy Hersey.
“We are hoping that we could communicate our research in a new way, so the artists be inspired and create work of arts that capture what we do at ARMI, so that we could get our work out to the community. What we wanted was to create a medium for communicating science that is easy for people to interact with, without having prior knowledge and scientific background.”
How does visual art, as a medium work to that effect, interpreting research on fields such as muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis and developmental biology?
“I think it’s beautiful and a lot of people will respond to it because it is attractive and pretty,” she says. “They can appreciate the aesthetics and then they can appreciate the science behind it.”
This opportunity will be given to the public through the exhibition ‘Regeneration’ which features artworks created during these residencies.
“I think they’ve done a really great job,” Ms Hersey says. “People picked up on a lot of different themes and research areas from around the institute and they really captured the essence of what we do at ARMI. It’s a really good visual representation of what the institute is trying to do, in terms of medical and scientific research.” Presented at St Heliers St Gallery at the Abbotsford Convent, the exhibition aims to generate income through the sale of the artworks, for the financial support of ARMI.
This is less about raising funds, though, and more about raising awareness. Elena Theodoridi, one of the nine artists featured in the exhibition, says that this was her main incentive, as well as her own personal interest in medical science. “I’m always interested in medical imaging. I always got a very different feel out of these images,” she says. “Instead of seeing what was depicted, I’ve been looking at them as maps, or landscapes. So I was looking forward to be able to use these amazing electronic microscopes that they have in their lab.”
For Ms Theodoridi, the most inspiring aspect of the research done at ARMI is that which aims to cure diseases or enhance recovery from injuries. “They do research on zebra fish which have ways to reproduce and replace injured cells with healthy ones,” she says. “These are all things that I would never have been able to see otherwise. I was specifically inspired by one particular researcher who was working on embryos and chicken eggs, while being pregnant herself. So my work creates a parallel between the chicken and human embryo,” she says. Ms Theodoridi has two works of art in ‘Regeneration’, her second work is also inspired by a researcher, one with a tattoo on her arm which reads: “be brave, be kind”.
“As a motto, this affected me and I think of it as a comment on the ethical means they use to do their experiments and the altruistic aim behind all that. My painting shows various animals and plants that practically live forever, such as a tree that lives for tens of thousands of years, or a type of jellyfish that never dies, if it is hit, it regenerates from its initial stage of being.
These are all artistic interpretations, with no scientific basis,” she adds with a laugh and says that this is precisely the point, to get artists and scientists in the same room and benefit from the mutual experience. “We artists have the tendency to not be very conventional and I hope that this may have given them a different perspective,” she says.
*’Regeneration’, an exhibition by Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI), is open from 25 May to 12 June at St Heliers St Gallery, Abbotsford Convent, Abbotsford, VIC.
For information and tickets to the opening (the other dates will be free) go to eventbrite.com.au/e/regeneration-an-exhibition-tickets-44170084913?utm_term=eventurl_text
