luke jerram: glass microbiology

I picked up a virus while at the Synergy conference, so I’m laying low and studying Luke Jerram’s glass sculptures of deadly viruses which explore the “tension between the artworks’ beauty, what they represent and their impact on humanity.”

E.coli, blown glass

E.coli detail

The transparent glass sculptures “were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena.” Jerram, a conceptual artist, consults and collaborates with scientists, engineers and artists to actualize each idea.

Jerram and the sculptures

Smallpox, blown glass

He worked with virologists from the University of Bristol as he developed the idea for the sculptures, which are one million times larger than the actual virus, and collaborated with glassblowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch, who pushed the boundaries of glassblowing to create the delicate specimens.

Swine Flu, detail

The series is a reflection of my interest in how images of phenomena are represented and presented to the public. I’m colour blind and this has given me a natural interest in exploring the edges of perception. Often images of viruses are taken in black and white on an electron microscope and then they are coloured artificially using Photoshop. Sometimes that will be for scientific purposes but other times it will be just to add emotional content or to make the image more attractive.

How many people believe viruses are brightly coloured? Are there any colour conventions and what kind of ‘presence’ do pseudocoloured images have that ‘naturally’ coloured specimens don’t?  How does the choice of different colours affect their reception?

Read an interview with the artist here.

You can watch a viral sculpture being blown in the video below, and listen to Jerram talk about how they are made and why bringing the idea forward was important to him in this BBC clip.