EDINBURGH.- A poignant and powerful sculptural work which marks the contributions of organ donors and honours their families, created by one of the UK’s most celebrated artists, has been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland, it is announced today, in the days before Organ Donation Week 2018 commences.

Positive Pattern (2016) is the latest artwork by leading contemporary artist and Turner Prize-nominee Christine Borland (b. 1965) to enter Scotland’s national art collection.

The artwork – originally commissioned by the Institute of Transplantation in Newcastle – is currently on display as part of NOW, a major three-year series of exhibitions launched at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) in 2017 to showcase the work of some of the most compelling and influential artists of today.

Visitors to NOW still have two more weeks to catch the sculptures The Scotsman recently described as, “delicate, private things… human in scale yet strangely other, negative space given substance. Somehow, [Borland] seems to have captured something of the essence of the transplant process, with its simultaneous dramas of life and loss”.

Christine Borland studied at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and at the University of Ulster, Belfast. In 1997 she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and over the last two decades her work has been internationally exhibited. She was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from the University of Glasgow in 2016 and is a Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle.

Borland has often collaborated with specialists in other fields, exploring areas such as forensic science, the history of medicine, medical ethics and human genetics. Positive Pattern was commissioned by the Institute of Transplantation to honour the courage and generosity of organ donors and their families, who help save and transform the lives of hundreds of people every year. At its centre is the idea of making visible an absence or a presence that is unseen. The artist worked closely with staff at the Institute and donor families for over two years, and alongside such intimate conversation, also drew inspiration from the work of acclaimed British artist Barbara Hepworth (1903–75), who placed importance on human connection and the role of internal intuition. Hepworth once noted, “I rarely draw what I see — I draw what I feel in my body”.

Comprising five abstract sculptures produced in dense foam, Positive Pattern recreates in three dimensions the empty interior spaces of five of Hepworth’s carved wooden sculptures, including Wave (1943-44), which resides in the Galleries’ collection. To make the work, interior cavities of Hepworth’s sculptures were laser–scanned, and the resulting data translated into 3–D computer renders. These were then transformed into physical objects by using a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) routing machine that carved the sculptures from specialist CNC milling foam. The five elements of the work are held in specially designed museum cases, displayed at a height which loosely matches that of a number of human organs, such as the brain or the heart. Borland has described these sculptures as, “abstract shapes suspended inside museum cases, which evoke an air of waiting; perhaps for a future, as yet un–imagined function”.

Speaking about the moving experience of working on this powerful project, Borland said: “As an artist, I connected with the surprisingly visceral but tender descriptions and imaginings of interior and exterior spaces of the body which featured in many of our discussions. In particular I was taken by how relatives described the way they processed the loss of a loved one by imagining how they have helped to save the life of another – by offering up a part of their physical being. It was the sense of this absent, but vital ‘other’ that became the central theme of the artwork”.

Positive Pattern is in an edition of three, with the first version in the edition held on permanent display at the Institute of Transplantation; NGS has acquired the second in the edition through the generosity of the Iain Paul Fund.

The artist Christine Borland said: “I’m so pleased that Positive Pattern, which means such a lot to me, has entered the national art collection, and is currently being exhibited in the exquisite space of SNGMA as part of NOW. I know that all who generously supported me in the initial production of this work in Newcastle will be delighted that new audiences can have access to its central narrative”.

Simon Groom, Director of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “We are delighted to have acquired such a powerful, innovative and reflective sculptural work for Scotland’s national art collection. Borland is wholly unique in her discipline and has also been an integral feature of the third instalment of NOW, our ambitious programme of contemporary art which showcases the extraordinary quality and range of work being made by artists associated with Scotland as well as those from across the globe. So we are thrilled to ensure this poignant and thought-provoking project can become a permanent fixture of the collection”.