by Matt Durran

My art practice is heavily influenced by the interrelationships between the craft of glass-making and scientific investigation. The Royal Free project was a collaboration between clinicians, cell biologists, material scientists and engineers whose work continues to be critical to the rapid progress of regenerative medicine. 

To move into the realm of 3-dimensions I was approached to utilise my deep understanding of glass as a medium, to create constructs from glass, an inert material with excellent morphology that provided the scaffold for the tissue engineering process. This alliance between science and specialist artistic invention has been crucial to the development of complex 3D tissues. 

The pictured work is inspired by the theme ‘Thresholds’ and draws upon my experience of working with The Royal Free University Hospital London in 2012. The project aimed to make a synthetic material that could form and host cell growth for human tissue transplants. My role was to create glass moulds that would act as support cast to grow tissue prior to its use in the body. 

The nose was chosen as the first synthetic form to be constructed as it would improve the quality of cancer patients life inordinately. The nose is a threshold between the body and the environment around it, the place where breath is drawn in and expelled, it is vital for three of our senses: smell, taste and hearing. In the current pandemic, the nose is also a site of vulnerability, of potential risk of infection and of spread. 

This piece was made by up-cycling window glass from my local hospital, during replacement. Windows also function as a threshold between the internal world of the hospital and the external world of everyday life. 

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