CORPUS: The Body Unbound
View of second room with works by Rebecca Warren (left), Sarah Lucas (centre), and Donald Rodney (right). Image © Leo Garbutt.
Exhibition
June - July 2017
CORPUS: The Body Unbound explored how artists past and present have engaged with the body – the corpus – to interrogate, analyse and reimagine fundamental aspects of the human condition. For artists, the human figure has been a site of optimism, a source of anxiety, as well as a symbol of limitations imposed by the self and society. Showing works from The Courtauld Gallery collection and the Arts Council Collection, the exhibition brought historic and contemporary pieces into dialogue. Curated by the students of The Courtauld’s MA Curating the Art Museum, CORPUS: The Body Unbound responded to The Courtauld Gallery’s Special Display Bloomsbury Art & Design, on view in the adjacent gallery.
Exhibiting artists: (from The Courtauld Gallery) Duncant Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Helen Saunders, Henry Moore, Peter Paul Rubens, Théodore Géricault, Eduard Dubois, (from the Arts Council Collection) Wolfgang Tillmans, Tsugumi Ota, Bruce Bernard, Claudette Johnson, Sarah Lucas, Zineb Sedira, Saleem Arif Quadri, John Coplans, Rebecca Warren, and Donald Rodney.
All photos by Leo Garbutt.
Music & Video created by Leo Garbutt @leogarbuttphotography
Events & Public Programming:
As part of the public programming for CORPUS: The Body Unbound in the Courtauld Gallery of Art, contemporary artists Saleem Arif Quadri MBE and Tsugumi Ota, discuss the subject of the human body in art. Their work, similarly grounded in myth and spirituality, is featured side-by-side in the special exhibition and highlights different elements of the human experience.
The Artist Talk took place 19 June 2017 in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre and was moderated by Suzanna Petot, co-curator of the exhibition and Event & Public Programmes Coordinator.