Sit back and relax with this film "The Art of Life: An Embodied Inquiry", which showcases paintings by artist Dr. Suzi Morris and explores the beautiful world of microbes. It was produced for the Institute of Infection's Great Exhibition Road exhibit, "Microbes: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful".

About this film and the artist

The fields of biotechnology, science and medicine capture the imagination of artist Suzi Morris and have become a medium through which decisions are made in her painting.

The film explores Morris’ paintings and their inspiration from science and the body. Morris has struggled with decades of medical intervention in managing Keratitis, a viral inflammation of the cornea that can eventually cause blindness. Discovering that the virus responsible for vision loss in one eye, is now serving as a digital avatar in the fight to cure cancer and other inherited diseases, opened the world of genomics and virology to her. Fascinated by the paradox of viruses’ ability to ‘kill’ or ‘cure’ led her to explore how new technologies such as CRISPR are changing genomic medicine and revolutionising drug discovery. Through the subtlety of layered surfaces and a negotiation between thoughts, feelings and painterly metaphors, her paintings reveal cerebral images of her imaginary thoughts on the body and what it will mean to be human in the future.

By inhabiting the viral sublime of her imagination, Morris’ paintings take us into ‘a far more than her’, an immensely rich seam of knowledge at a new turning-point in medical science which is rarely represented in visual art. Cherry Smyth, art writer and poet.

Suzi Morris was born in Ayr and originally studied Illustration and Design at Kingston University. After being awarded a scholarship at Kingston she completed an MA in Fine Art at the City & Guilds of London Art School followed by a practice based Professional Doctorate in Fine Art at UEL. An affiliation with Imperial College London supports the research side of her practice while she lives and works from her studio in London. Her work has recently been recognised by Scottish Parliament and has featured in exhibitions in the UK and Germany, with work held in the Imperial School of Medicine and private collections globally.

This film was produced by Fact Not Fiction Films kindly supported by Imperial College London.

https://www.suzimorrisart.com/

Instagram @suzimorrisart