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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Irene BrownORCiD, Dr Fiona Anderson, Ranti Bam, Neil Bromwich, Professor Andrew Burton, Mx Angel Cohn Castle, Professor Richard Clay, Jo Coupe, Professor Katie Cuddon, Theresa Easton, Dr Katarzyna FaleckaORCiD, Nick Fox, Richard Grayson, Lynn Hagan, Professor Catrin HuberORCiD, Professor Christopher Jones, Dr Edward Juler, Bridget KennedyORCiD, Professor Uta Kogelsberger, Dr Gayle Meikle, Paul Merrick, Dr Christian MievesORCiD, Jane Millican, Dr Stephen MoonieORCiD, Dr Ingrid Pollard, Professor Vee Pollock, Erika Servin GonzalezORCiD, Tim Shaw, Dr Olga Smith, Petra Szemán, Professor Richard TalbotORCiD, Tracey Tofield, Dr Harry WeeksORCiD, Professor Wolfgang Weileder, Louise Wilson, Professor Jane Wilson
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An exhibition of 30+ artists, along with recent research by at historians and curators working in the Fine Art department of Newcastle University. The exhibition starts from Lewis Hyde’s idea that “a work of art is a gift, not a commodity … where there is no gift there is no art … The two senses of gift refer not only to the creation of the work – what we might call the inner life of art; but… to its outer life as well, to the work after it has left the maker’s hands.” Hyde praises novelist Joseph Conrad’s idea that “the artist appeals to that part of our being … which is a gift and not an acquisition – and, therefore, more permanently enduring.” In other words, an artwork is like both a blessing or form of extended care or hospitality, and it is an invitation to recipocate or respond in kind. We can now see such processes in neuroscientific terms. The most fundamental function of art is to stimulate our ‘mirror neurons’: the cells that help us recognise or understand others, and which are activated most sharply by acts of gifting, not zero-sum forms of exchange. To extend Conrad’s image, the effects of encountering art are ‘permanently enduring’ because we are changed by our experience of art. That enduring change is achieved through the heightened responses demanded of our mirror neurons by artworks.For the past decade, Brown’s practice has been focused upon the experience and idea of ‘wonder’. Her work has explored “the history and philosophy of science”, by looking at the nature of illusion in the reception of images, across photography and hand-made pictures, and across both scientific and pseudo-scientific processes of knowledge-production. This work has been created in response to collections of scientific objects. Brown has frequently turned towards pre-modern, or early modern forms of ordering the world: to ‘cabinets of curiosity’ and historical junctures where the distinctions between magic and science, and art and science, were less clear than they seem today. In both instances, experiments in knowing the world are revealed as having only ever been partial, rather than objective or universal truths in which nature’s secrets were definitively revealed. In Brown’s work we might start to acknowledge that much of the material world remains unknowable, rather than subject to our ‘mastery’.
Artist(s): Brown I, Anderson F, Bam R, Bromwich N, Burton A, Castle A, Clay R, Coupe J, Cuddon K, Easton T, Falecka K, Fox N, Grayson R, Hagan L, Huber C, Jones C, Juler E, Kennedy B, Kogelsberger U, Meikle G, Merrick P, Mieves C, Millican J, Moonie S, Pollard I, Pollock V, Servin E, Shaw T, Smith O, Szemán P, Talbot R, Tofield T, Weeks H, Weileder W, Wilson L, Wilson J
Publication type: Exhibition
Publication status: Published
Year: 2024
Number of Pieces: 2
Venue: Hatton Gallery
Location: Newcastle University
Media of Output: Collage
URL: https://hattongallery.org.uk/whats-on/mirror-neurons
