“Under the Surface” runs from October 20th until December 9th.
An opening reception will be held October 26th, 7-9pm.

Marilène Oliver works with medical imaging data to create artworks. Since 2001, Marilène has worked with MRI and CT scans to create print based sculptures and installations that invite us to rethink medical scans, suggesting that they can reveal more than just a medical diagnosis.

Marilène has created a large body of work based on medical data, a selection of which are on display in the McMullen Gallery. Works such as The Kiss were made from bespoke data of subjects known personally to the artist and were acquired especially in order to make the work. These works took as their motivation a fear for the loss of embodied relationships in an increasingly digitised world, suggesting that medical data could become future relics to cherish and covet. Other works such as Dervishes and Womb Axis, were made using anonymised, open source data of subjects unknown to the artist. These works explored other aspects of the impacts of digitisation on society – that of the need to create endless digital identities to perform and present.

In order to create these artworks, Marilène has had to find innovative ways to get medical data in and out of software, create templates and plans for installations, registration maps for printing and vector paths for laser cutting. Here for the first time Oliver is presenting these process based works alongside her sculptures. They reveal a complexity that lie under the surface all of digital life; a nervous energy, a constant demand to hold everything together, to not mis-register a hole nor omit a check box.