Marina Warner co-curates new Science Museum exhibition

Issue date: 24 September 2002

Works by Paula Rego, Kiki Smith, Dorothy Cross, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, and Dhruva Mistry will feature alongside historical exhibits and state-of-the-art technology in 'Metamorphing', a major Wellcome Trust exhibition at the Science Museum. Curated by award-winning writer and critic Marina Warner, and writer and former Wellcome Trust curator Sarah Bakewell, the exhibition opens on Friday 4 October 2002.

'Metamorphing' explores the vast theme of bodily transformation in mythology, art and science, taking as its starting point the lines from Ovid's Metamorphoses: 'All things are always changing...'. Over 100 exhibits will be featured including loans from the V&A, the British Museum, the Hunterian Museum and private international collections, as well as archival materials, rare books, material specimens and medical paraphernalia from the collections of the Wellcome Trust and the Science Museum.

The exhibition will include new work by Paula Rego inspired by Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'; 'Standing Harpie' by Kiki Smith; 'Eyemaker', a film by Dorothy Cross; 'Mutant Insect' paintings by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger; a series of photographs by Spanish artist Cristina García Rodero documenting voodoo and dance rituals in Haiti; Alice Maher's 14-foot 'Magdalen', or 'Large Hair Drawing'; and a Hindu-inspired sculpture by Dhruva Mistry.

Historical exhibits will include a 16th-century manuscript of Boaistuau's 'Histoires Prodigieuses', an 18th-century compendium of demons, a post-mescaline drawing by Henri Michaux and the mummified remains of a merman. Technology exhibits include time-lapse photography by Oxford Scientific Films of the emergence of butterflies; a 'Phall-O-Meter' (a ruler produced by the Intersex Society in Ann Arbor satirising surgical decisions to resolve indeterminate sex); and 'A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure', a sound work by Matmos featuring music derived from sounds of plastic surgery.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of Marina Warner's 'Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds' by OUP. She recently published a novel, 'The Leto Bundle', and a collection of her short stories, 'Murderers I have Known', will be published by Chatto & Windus in November. Sarah Bakewell is the author of 'The Smart', published by Vintage paperbacks, and is currently working on a biography of the Danish adventurer Jorgen Jorgenson.

'Metamorphing': Transformation in science, art and mythology
Date: 4 October 2002 - 16 February 2003
Location: Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD
Open daily, 10.00–18.00
Admission free

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