Anatomy (Group Show) Review Antlers Gallery, Park Street, Bristol By Polly Allen

Mr Mead: Lady Mary and the Moon ChildrenMr Mead

It’s no coincidence that, for as long as humans have been civilised, we’ve been dually fascinated and horrified by anatomy. From Hamlet’s soliloquising over poor Yorick’s skull, to Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusting of the same body part, we are a people constantly aware of our vulnerable forms.

What better a subject to take for a group show than this? Bristol’s self-proclaimed ‘nomadic’ gallery, Antlers, has chosen to lay down some temporary roots in Park Street for this group exhibition, which gives the viewer two rooms of all things corporeal against stark, clinically white walls.

The first piece to greet me as I walk through the door is Ellie Coates’ Medusa Book, a long concertina of pencil drawings making forms that resemble DNA strands, unfolding from a snip of hair. Pencil is also used in the work of Ryan Hodge and Tim Lane, but Coates’ opening right beside the doorway was enough to stop me in my tracks. There is something hypnotic about the imagery, but also an undeniably threatening presence in the Medusa of the title, whose mythical powers meant that nobody could look her in the eye if they wanted to survive. Thankfully, Coates has provided a mirror for this purpose and I remain unscathed.

Meanwhile the mysterious Mr. Mead, a Bristol-based artist, is keen to display some of the most surreal anatomical artwork that many of us will ever have seen. Deftly applying Indian ink, he transports us to an alternate reality of anthropomorphic creatures that seem to be part man, part animal and part machine. The spindly Time Wolf definitely caught my eye: a lone figure with legs to rival Twiggy in her heyday, his eyes are empty sockets but he is rendered lifelike and he carries an old outsized stopwatch like a talisman. This kind of intricate drawing will capture the imagination of visitors from across the generations (my top recommendation for younger viewers being Lady Mary and the Moon Children), with illustrative charm but the power of originality meaning that Mr. Mead could not be confined to the pages of a book. Keep an eye out for his original playing cards, on sale at the gallery.

Rose Sanderson: To You I Give

Talking of books, there are two artists who employ the power of old volumes in their work here, and this is a resurging trend that you may have become gradually aware of in various commercial practices, from interior to graphic design – we’ve had cameo silhouetted figures, lockets and old postcards, and we’ve all been told to Keep Calm and Carry On. Using antiquated text and images that would normally be confined to specialist collector markets or the scrapbooks of Victorian ladies, this kind of vintage imagery has been growing ever popular in the last five years – jewellers, animators and illustrators have all been influenced by the charm of the old. In the Anatomy show, Alexander Korzer-Robinson and Rose Sanderson couldn’t resist getting their hands on aged books, with the former drawn to 1930s encyclopaedias as frames and the latter drawn to a wider range of text coverings as a form of (not exactly blank) canvas.

Alexander Korzer-Robinson: Old Song

Korzer-Robinson’s The Concise Home Doctor, Vol. I features layer upon layer of carefully crafted portraits, bones and diagrams, built up to explore the use of fragmented memories and edited objects. A further piece, Old Song, deals with evolution and the beauty of nature. Meanwhile, Rose Sanderson has given anatomy and book art a more sensitive and literal translation in her selection of beautifully painted works. To You I Give is the depiction of an organ so lifelike it’s almost pulsating, which sits atop a Nurse’s Dictionary. There is also great word and image interplay in the placing of a brain at the centre of My Thoughts Are Complex…, which is virtually symmetrical and aesthetically gorgeous, yet it is supposed to be repulsive to view such a thing. Our normal gut reactions are challenged by such renderings.

This is an exhibition which, if you walked down Park Street with a head full of things to do, you might easily overlook by accident. But I would urge you to make a trip there if you’re in the Bristol area – anatomy is an excellent and engaging theme, handled maturely and imaginatively at Antlers and, what’s more, this is also a commercial venture that could allow you to buy into the next big artistic talent. If you like what you see, feel free to purchase it, and let it remind you that we’re all only human. After all, you can’t take that money with you to the afterlife.