The Heart Of The Matter

The Heart of the Matter is a touring exhibition, made partly in collaboration with Great Ormond Street Hospital patients with heart conditions, that brings together art and medicine to reflect on the human heart.

The heart can symbolise romantic love and the centre of human emotion, but it is also the engine room of our body and an intricate piece of machinery.

Through artworks inspired by patients with heart conditions, their families and clinicians, the exhibition invites you to discover the extraordinary nature and complexity of this organ.

The Heart of the Matter began with a collaboration between artist Sofie Layton and bioengineer Giovanni Biglino in 2017. They brought together patients with heart conditions at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Bristol Heart Institute and the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, to look at the heart emotionally and metaphorically in workshops with scientists, artists, students, and nurses.

Conversations and stories from these workshops inspired artworks that offer insight into the heart’s beauty, fragility and resilience, using scientific and artistic methods.

Medical 3D printing and topographical maps describe cardiovascular anatomy, digital animation responds to medical imaging, and other abstracted stories are given form in printed textiles, sound installations and sculpture.

The exhibition is currently on view at the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle until 6 May 2018, then tours to Bristol in the Summer, before coming to London in the Autumn, with an accompanying exhibition at GOSH.

Find out more: www.insidetheheart.org