Edited by Siân Ede
Preface by A.S. Byatt
2000

£10.99 + p&p, 200 pp
Col and b/w illus
ISBN 978 0 903319 87 4
Buy from Central Books
Available in Aus/NZ from Eleanor Brasch Enterprises

Why should visual artists turn their attention to science? Because of its new materials and techniques, its strange metaphors, its controversies. An examination of science forces us to view our lives from new perspectives. It provides a new sense of scale, whether the artist is beguiled by cosmological vastness or molecular detail.

Strange and Charmed is the first book to investigate the burgeoning interest in science which is evident in thework of many contemporary artists. With a preface by A.S. Byatt and contributions by distinguished art historian Martin Kemp, artist Andrea Duncan, Wellcome Trust Head of Exhibitions Ken Arnold, artist/physicist Richard Bright and cognitive psychologist Mike Page, the book identifies a new relationship between art and science and looks at its implications for both cultures. Many adventurous works are discussed and illustrated, including Helen Chadwick’s sensitive creations involving human embryos, James Acord’s radioactive sculptures, Kitsou Dubois’s award-winning choreography in zero gravity, and Cornelia Parker’s Cold Dark Matter, and the new work beginning to emerge from artist/scientist collaborations.

‘We need to feel there is something real out there – of which we are a part and not the whole – and science reveals it to us.’ A.S. Byatt

Siân Ede is Deputy Director at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London and Director of its Arts Programme. She is now in continual demand in the UK and abroad as a speaker and writer on art and science. Her latest book is Art and Science (I.B. Tauris, 2005).