Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum

I visited Leamington Spa Art and Museum on 8th November to see the exhibition 

Medicate 2015

The works of art in this exhibition examine the physical, societal and psychological effects of disease and also the value and practice of medical science.

 Among the artists are Damien Hirst, Christine Borland, Keith Coventry, Jason Oddy, Laura Glassar, Tanya Kovats, Alexa Wright, Marc Quinn and Lyndall Whelps.

 Keith Coventry's work makes us question what effect prescribed and recreational drugs  affect us physically. His work is titled  Inhaler and is the cast of a genuine inhaler. However, when we examine it more closely we find that it has been adapted for use as an inhaler of crack cocaine!

Alexa Wright uses digitally manipulated photography to show us how our physical appearance can be altered  by illness and disease and how we are affected by this. 

Mark Quinn's work examines the relationship between physical appearance and mental state. The image is made by overlaying a photgraph of himself with pictures of various other peoples body parts, including the hand of his then girlfriend which is shown lying over his heart!

I found the whole of this exhibition very interesting and thought provoking but my favourite piece of work 

is The Last Supper by Damien Hirst. I think this is an ingenious piece of work, and  like Keith Coventry's  Inhaler, looks at the effect on our bodies of taking not just  prescribed and recreational drugs but also foods that have a detrimental effect on our health like processed food. Hirst has made a set of thirteen large  screenprints, (although only eight are on display). Each screenprint depicts the graphics for a pharmaceutical drug but he has substituted the manufacturers name with his own and the product name is replaced with the name of a traditional  supper dish like beans and chips, meat pie and chips etc. The name he has titled it The Last Supper seems to refer to the drug in question probably being the the last thing we will consume or our last meal before entering the next world!