'Our mission is to show art with intent in a place you wouldn't expect it'

Now extended due to a high level of interest, the current show at Barnabas Arts House in Newport demonstrates how local galleries can push boundaries and raise interest in visual art, writes Jenny White

- Jenny White

THE complexity, joy and pain of life in a human body is the theme of the current exhibition at Barnabas Arts House in Newport.

The show, which brings together artists from all over the UK, has been extended until the end of September due to the level of interest it has generated.

The Body is an exhibition that Barnabas Arts House founder Janet Martin has wanted to host for two decades. It finally came about after she put out a national call for exhibitors, which attracted 50 respondents. The selection was made from these and from work by late artists that she felt belonged in the show, which runs from the 1870s to the present day.

"It's got everything from illustrations from the 1870s made to teach doctors about anatomy and physiology [Anatomical Surgery by Jospeh Maclise] to life drawings by renowned artists as well as some newcomers," says Janet.

"It's a complete mixture, and it's really gone down well. It's allowed people to not just come, scan, and walk out, but to really involve themselves with the work."

This owes everything to Janet's selection criteria, which extended beyond questions of commercial viability to consider the intrinsic artistic value of the work and its place in the show. As such, it includes challenging pieces such as Do Not Go Gentle by Welsh artist David Garner, which tackles the human cost of Wales' mining history via an X-ray image of his father's lungs, ravaged by pneumoconiosis, clothed in a miner's jacket and hung above a bucket of coal.