Mapping is something of an obsession for sculptor Angela Palmer (b.1957).
Although for many years her career was in journalism, in 2002 she returned to education, taking a BA in fine art at Ruskin College in Oxford followed by an MA at the Royal College of Art.
Her career change has proved fruitful and opening this week is the second solo exhibition of her work, Life Lines, at London gallery Waterhouse & Dodd from May 24 to June 15 at 26 Cork Street.
Palmer's sculptures could almost as easily be described as drawings. Using digital information provided by MRI and CT scans, they map the contours of her subjects - often the head of a human or animal - engraved by hand using an electric drill onto multiple panes of glass which are then placed together to create a 3-D reconstruction. Fittingly, considering this alliance of science and art, some of her work is now in the collection of The Wellcome Trust in London.
She creates portraits by peeling back the layers, and her subjects in this exhibition include the head of the author Robert Harris, the head of Djeddejehutyiuefankh, an Egyptian mummy from the 25th Dynasty now on show in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and Finding Goldilocks, based on NASA's Kepler Mission to find potentially habitable planets outside our own solar system, which charts different planetary systems, with each glass sheet representing a further 250 light years from Earth.
The show includes 13 works, each one made by the artist, although most are produced in a series of five, with the exception of the Oxford Pig, which is the only one available.
Prices range from £4000 to £20,000.
Tel: 020 7734 7800.
