RETURN TO OLDER WORKS
Support work (hippocrates 1:075), 2006
Details
Welded tubular steel.
Photography: Ruth Clark
Links
Support WORK, GHOST STRUCTURE (HIPPOCRATES 1:1), 2015
Details
Welded tubular steel, sprayed white.
Photography: Vincent Lowe
Links
DESCRIPTION
Borland turns her attention to Hippocrates’s plane tree on the Greek Island of Kos, under which he was supposed to have taught medicine in the 5th century BCE. Hippocrates is both historical and mythical figure, the attributed author of the 5th century BC texts on which two millennia of medical practice were based, and the reputed son of the Greek god Aesculapius, believed capable of bringing the dead back to life.
Hippocrates’ tree remarkably still survives, although its massively extended branches require artificial support. Now ageing, ailing and in need of support, Borland has reproduced the man-made steel skeleton of supports that now sustains the tree, leaving us to imagine it impossibly arching above us. She treats Hippocrates’s plane tree, as she treats bone, blankets, breath and dust, as persistently significant material from which she can bring to light something pertinent in relation to human identity. Ultimately, her work is concerned with re-visualising that which is no longer there, finding ways imaginatively to cross back over the line dividing the body from the self, the specimen from the individual, in order that she might recuperate something of the essence of human life.
Exhibition Guide, Christine Borland, Preserves, The Fruitmarket Gallery
research/process
Research visit to record and measure Hippocrates Plane Tree on the island of Kos, Greece.
