An evening exploring the relationships and emotional resonance between creativity, medical science, civil engineering and the buildings and infrastructures we manifest and inhabit.
Pairing the unique perceptions of artist Eloise Hawser, and industry icon Sir Peter Bazalgette we unpick the process behind Hawser’s interrogative journey creating the exhibition By the deep, by the mark. A culmination of two years of research in residence at Somerset House Studios, the exhibition connects anecdotes, archival materials, maps and models with unique sculptures, video, audio and medical phantoms, each meticulously realised work reflecting unexpected relationships between objects, materials, precision engineering, the body, the sewer, the river and the city.
Sir Peter Bazalgette is the great-great-grandson of Victorian civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette, a 19th-century English civil engineer whose major achievement was the creation (in response to the Great Stink of 1858) of a sewer network for central London, instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning the cleansing of the River Thames.
Sir Peter Bazalgette is also well known for his own longstanding contribution to the developments in the UK cultural economy, previously as Chair to Arts Council England, currently to ITV, and more recently author to the publication The Empathy Instinct. In this publication Bazalgette outlines how advances in medical and technical engineering can map the human brain, enabling neuroscientists and psychologists to know which parts are specifically linked to empathy, causing him to questions how we utilise these abilities to positively enhance our society.
Together the duo draw on one another’s experience and expertise, to consider how our buildings and objects reflect and embody our inner worlds and how vital creativity is to pioneering achievements that benefit humanity.
The evening will be chaired by the Director of Somerset House Trust Jonathan Reekie CBE, and concludes with an audience Q&A, and book signing of The Empathy Instinct.
