The Scottish artist Christine Borland has died aged 60.
For the her first solo exhibition, titled From Life at Glasgow’s Tramway gallery in 1994, Borland bought a human skeleton via mail-order, getting the bones from a medical education supplies firm. Thereafter followed a career of some 60 solo international exhibitions and over 200 group exhibitions and events that delved into medical histories, colonial legacies and human ethics.
A series of works used simulated patient manikins, the teaching aids shown in vitrines and used as the basis of video works that sought the uncanny and delved into how ideas and prejudices are replicated across history.
Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007, at Tate Britain Borland placed skeletons on glass shelves and dusted them with white powder before removing the bones, leaving just the traces of the now absent figure.
For a later series of projects, Borland collaborated with artist Brody Condon in works that used human body donation as their starting point.
Borland graduated from Environmental Art at The Glasgow School of Art in 1987, and MFA at the University of Ulster in 1988. She taught at Northumbria University where she founded the Cultural Negotiation of Science research group.
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