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Mike EssonMA RCA, DipArt Edin. Senior Lecturer; Director IDRI
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Contact Details: |
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| Room: | F321 | |
| Phone: | +61 2 93850792 | |
| Fax: | +61 2 93850719 | |
| Email this staff member. | ||
Academic Profile
Education
MA , Royal College of Art, London, UK , .
DA , Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland , .
Areas of Expertise
Drawing and Sculpture
Teaching Areas
Drawing, Anatomy for the Artist, Drawing and Painting
Current Research Activity
Although working in a broad range of disciplines within the visual arts, the core of Mike Esson’s art practise has been the study, interpretation and expression of the human figure. This has been the focus of 10 major solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions.
Mike’s current work continues a long-term exploration of the body; its structure and vulnerability through a personal narrative, which deals with how we view ourselves.
Moving between physiology, physiognomy, and psychology, Mike draws upon science and pseudo-science as a catalyst for creating visual interpretations. The visual expression is explored through the drawing process, finding equivalents in line and mark to investigate a visual resonance for ideas of mortality and identity.
Mike’s research is part of a wider cultural climate, forged links between art, anatomy and surgery; not in the obvious way where new technologies dominate, rather through the evaluation of traditional values with a contemporary relevance. Much of his work also deals with the self- portrait. It is here that the role of the artist becomes blurred with that of the surgeon and patient, ambiguous metaphors reflect medical histories and confront private fears.
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2005, Don’t Criticise The Flowers. Dong Hua University, Shanghai, China.
2005, Shouting At The Carcass. The Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China.
2005, The Courage of your Doubts. Goethe – Institut, Sydney.
2003, Imagine My Heart Was Yours. Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney.
Group Exhibitions
2005, Drawing – A Reflective Practice. Air Gallery, London.
2005, Personal and Material – Ian Howard and Michael Esson. Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
2005, Thai – Australian Contemporary Prints 2005. Chiangmai University Art Museum, Chiangmai, Thailand.
2005, Custom Prints Unpacked. Delmar Gallery, Sydney.
2004, Li River Project. Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China.
2004, Li River Project. Guang Xi College of Fine Arts, Nanning, China.
2004, Deeper Drafts. Sir Herman Black Gallery, University of Sydney, Sydney.
Professional Associations
International Drawing Research Institute
Director (Australia)
Glasgow School of Art
Visiting Professor in Drawing
Xi’an Academy of Art, China
Guest Professor
Dong Hua University, China
Consultant Professor
INCUBATE Winter 2008 COFA magazine
Plastic Surgeons re-skilled by an Artist
Dominique Angeloro
While many of the programs at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) push the boundaries of artistic practice, there’s one course in the drawing department that sits on the cutting-edge. Literally occupying a place where art and science intersect, Michael Esson, Director of the International Drawing Research Institute, runs art workshops for plastic surgeons; not so the doctors can become better artists, but so that they can develop their artistic skills to become better surgeons.
Courses have been offered not only to senior plastic surgeons at COFA, but also in Adelaide, Tasmania, and more recently to 80 trainee surgeons in Melbourne.
Titled ‘The Art of Reconstruction’, these three day courses lead students through a series of activities including crafting a skull from cardboard, clay modelling, life drawing and self-portraiture. Esson says that the workshop brings a “new awareness to the observational and perceptual skills of the surgeons. This in turn is very useful, in the pre and post operative assessment, and in general adds to the understanding of aesthetic considerations that might be explored in the operating theatre”.
Esson is well-placed to make these observations, having watched surgeons at work while an artist-in-residence at Scotland’s Royal College of Surgeons in 1993. It was in Edinburgh that he first initiated some drawing classes for medical practitioners, inspired by a similar course he had attended in London. However, while Esson had been impressed by the enthusiasm of the British course, he felt that the conceptual reach of the program could be further extended. “I thought I could bring some substance to the process, ” he says, “and establish a course which would provide artistic parallels to surgical procedures, and have direct benefits for both surgeon and patient.
His idea for developing a more rigorous workshop at COFA took shape on his return to Sydney, with the support of Michael Poole, Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of New South Wales. The drawing and modelling workshop was specifically designed with plastic surgeons in mind, and includes a variety of artistic tasks devised to focus on the 3D properties and proportions of the human face and figure. “Because I had run these drawing courses in Edinburgh with the plastic surgeons,” Esson explains, “and I had the opportunity to view a number of reconstructive operations, I had made some observations which proved particularly useful for me in developing the course.”
The workshop particularly aims to refine the surgeon’s perception of 3D forms, sharpening their appreciation of space and volume. In one task, the surgeons are given moulds of facial features – a nose, a mouth, an ear – and asked to sculpt clay replicas. Interestingly, despite their experience in reconstructive surgery, some of the students have been surprised by how much clay is required in the crafting of each facial contour. Esson has also observed that the surgeons often work on their sculpture from a single position, perhaps reflecting their tendency to work on patients from just one side of an operating table. This single perspective approach often results in a “flattening” of their forms, leading to works that are lacking in depth and volume. To counter this, Esson says that he tries to encourage his students “to look around the form, considering the positive and negative spaces, and instead of trying to draw the form as an outline, to construct the form as a 3D, spatial reality.”
In another task, the surgeons are asked to draw their own reflection, one quadrant at a time, on separate sheets of paper, before piecing their image back together again. Here, they are forced to consider their face, fraction by fraction, extending their awareness of the proportions and asymmetry of human features. This process also flexes skills that are particularly useful in the field of reconstructive facial surgery, where a surgeon might have to recreate a person’s entire profile on the basis of just part of the remaining face.
While the tools and materials on hand in the workshop might be worlds away from the operating theatre, Esson is convinced that the artistic practices utilised in the course tap into similar perceptual abilities and disciplines to those used within the field of plastic surgery. “I would evaluate the participants in the course, not on their ability to produce a likeness, or make an ‘attractive’ drawing, but rather on their visual curiosity and understanding of the technical and conceptual framework that we are engaged with. There did seem to be a correlation between those who skilfully embraced these new challenges and those who were highly regarded as surgeons by their colleagues. ”
The notion that the visual arts have much shared knowledge with the science-based discipline of plastic surgery is also not so surprising considering that the term ‘plastic’ is derived from the Greek plastikos: to mould. While some surgeons who have participated in Esson’s course have gone on to become successful visual artists in their own right, he notes, “that is not the intention. The intention is always to do activities, to do workshops, that are going to help the participants’ perceptual abilities and better their understanding and practice as surgeons.”
