Skip to main content
DCA Galleries during Christine Borland's exhibition - the galleries are dark, with large screens with blue projections of jellyfish on them.

Christine Borland

What makes for the fullness and perfection of life, for beauty and happiness, is good...

10 November 1999 - 23 January 2000

'What makes for the fullness and perfection of life, for beauty and happiness, is good. What makes for death, disease, imperfection, suffering, is bad.'

Working in the context of Dundee's growing international reputation as a locus of innovative research in the life sciences, Borland's new work has developed out of her relationship in recent months with researchers in the field of human genetics. Using a variety of materials currently employed in DNA research, the work employs the strong visual qualities of these substances to explore the serendipity of nature itself.

The exhibition's starting point was a blood sample given as part of a routine a screening procedure for congenital abnormalities during the artist's pregnancy. Encompassing significant and emotive issues such as the ownership of genes and the drive to eradicate abnormalities, the exhibition brings together representations of a number of life forms, connected through their unnerving formal similarities. Including some of the tools of genetic research used to visualise identity and difference, a key concept for the exhibition is that of the family tree and the transference of information and 'characteristics' through its system.

Exploiting the stunning visual appearance of the most fundamental living forms, the atmospheric installation creates an environment in which life literally appears suspended. Connecting contemporary technological innovation with much earlier means of visual analysis, the exhibition prompts consideration of our responses to difference and its significance in human identity.

Christine Borland: Exhibition Notes

Click here to download the Exhibition Notes for Christine Borland: What makes for the fullness and perfection of life, for beauty and happiness, is good...
Download
86 KB (PDF)

Exhibition images

DCA Galleries during Christine Borland's exhibition - the galleries are dark, with large screens with blue projections of jellyfish on them.
White heads made out of ceramic sit on top of concrete plinths.
Two skulls sit on a glass table. The skulls are painted with blue designs.
Droplets made out of glass, with tinfoil on top hang from the ceiling.
From Christine Borland's exhibition in DCA. The galleries are dark and there is a white, glass box in the middle of the floor. There is also a large projection of a blue jellyfish on the wall also.
White heads made out of ceramic sit on top of concrete plinths.
DCA Galleries during Christine Borland's exhibition - the galleries are dark, with large screens with blue projections of jellyfish on them.
White heads made out of ceramic sit on top of concrete plinths.
Two skulls sit on a glass table. The skulls are painted with blue designs.
Droplets made out of glass, with tinfoil on top hang from the ceiling.
From Christine Borland's exhibition in DCA. The galleries are dark and there is a white, glass box in the middle of the floor. There is also a large projection of a blue jellyfish on the wall also.
White heads made out of ceramic sit on top of concrete plinths.
DCA Galleries during Christine Borland's exhibition - the galleries are dark, with large screens with blue projections of jellyfish on them.
White heads made out of ceramic sit on top of concrete plinths.
Two skulls sit on a glass table. The skulls are painted with blue designs.
Droplets made out of glass, with tinfoil on top hang from the ceiling.
From Christine Borland's exhibition in DCA. The galleries are dark and there is a white, glass box in the middle of the floor. There is also a large projection of a blue jellyfish on the wall also.
White heads made out of ceramic sit on top of concrete plinths.