“Debbie’s clinical curiosity and Theo’s creative eye bring together the worlds of medicine and art, as they reinterpret items from our medical and fine art collections. The stunning results are displayed in the exhibition, alongside the original objects to highlight their hidden richness and beauty. Theo’s photographs offer new, altered perspectives that challenge our understanding and impression of supposedly inert museum objects.” Royal College of Physicians
“The images honour the historical significance of the objects whilst also transporting them to a realm beyond any specific time period; a new, undefined space for the viewer to study and re-interpret the items.” Theo Deproost
“The photographer taking a scalpel to old museum collections…”
”Theo Deproost takes niche, specialist items from museum collections and imbues them with new life, a process of transformation. The British artist’s photographs expand the scale of these forms, flooding the originals with bold hues and foregrounding intricate details that the naked eye may miss… “
“The images in Unfamiliar feel celebratory. They push the limits of still life photography, but also highlight the skill involved in creating the original objects. For the non-scientific viewer, they offer fascinating historical insights into the medical profession.” Emily Steer for British Journal of Photography
“Photographer Theo Deproost’s take on the historic clinical tools carefully selected by physician associate Debbie Jegede brings art and science into one common realm, and places unlikely objects at the core of an exhibition. The photographs see snuff boxes, stethoscopes and items unidentifiable to the clinically uneducated eye suspended in an otherworldly cloud of colour and contrast…”
“…‘This exhibition presents something very different for the Royal College of Physicians Museum,’ says Lowri Jones, senior curator of the museum. Using the unfamiliarity of the items as an obvious starting point, Deproost’s photographic style introduces further layers of intrigue. Jones considered the unique nature of the exhibition in comparison to previous shows at the museum, valuing the chance to be able ‘to bring together Debbie and Theo’s contrasting medical and artistic backgrounds’. She adds that the exhibition ‘demonstrates how effective collaborations between the arts and sciences can be’.”
Martha Elliott for Wallpaper*
Unfamiliar is on display at the Royal College of Physicians, 11 St. Andrew’s Place, London, NW1 4LE
23rd January - 28th July 2023
January 23rd - July 28th, 2023
Unfamiliar
Theo Deproost in conversation with physician associate Debbie Jegede, discussing their collaboration for Unfamiliar. Video by Chocolate Films.
Re:Collect
“I am absorbed by the idea that the objects have been pulled from their natural time-line and denied their inevitable disintegration and reintegration with the earth. Instead, they have been preserved and stored, awaiting a new purpose. My images offer a window into the surreal, unexpected world that the objects have found themselves in - experiencing a strange and rambling immortality…”
“…These objects could be (and often have been) overlooked, but all contain their own stories from the past. Rather than communicating a rigid proposition or narrative, the vivid colours, arresting detail and beguiling shapes stimulate the memory and imagination of the viewer, encouraging a more exploratory, almost child-like, perspective. Each image passes through a filter of the viewer’s thoughts and experiences, where unique connections and interpretations are formed. It is in these personal connections that a new future for the objects may yet be defined.” Theo Deproost
“Theo Deproost’s work is part of an on-going project in which he has been exploring and photographing the stored collections held by museums. His aim is to bring the hidden into the light and to create new narratives around the objects. The images that he has made are striking, not just in their beauty, but also in their technical mastery. In order to capture such fine detail Theo uses complex technical processes. Made in this way, out of context and out of scale, dramatically lit and reproduced in vivid colours, the photographs emphasise the sculptural qualities of the objects.” Dr. Paul Harper for Museum of the Home
“When we think about historical artefacts, the images that come to mind are often ones of documentation – the sort of photographs that live in a dusty archive somewhere or in the pages of an equally dusty textbook. It was this association that photographer Theo Deproost and curator Amy Foulds were keen to counter with new project Re:Collect…”
“…Deproost’s dramatic and eye-catching artworks breathe new life into items that may otherwise go unseen and unappreciated. The striking colours and evocative silhouettes encourage a more imaginative understanding of these artefacts.” Daniel Milroy Maher for Creative Review
Lost In Time
“These images unsettle the orderliness of the collections and their relationship to scientific truth. Rather, they evoke the authentic disorderliness of lived reality. Theo wants to arrest our attention, to make us look again at these things. He wants to reveal them in all their detail, highlighting their core components of shape, texture and colour. But In creating these images he isn’t simply making an accurate representation of the world, he also wants to draw our attention to its strangeness, to make us alert to the richness of the world around us...”
“…The works that have come out of this exploration of the Museum’s stores have been curated to make an exhibition, Lost in Time, which places the photographs alongside selected objects in relationships that are poetic rather than taxonomic, surreal and unsettling, but absorbing and compelling. In some ways it reproduces those formative experiences of wandering around the museum as a child, filled with wonder.”
Dr. Paul Harper for Good On Paper
Virtual Tour of the full exhibition at Museum In The Park, 2020.
Video © Samuel O’Brien Music © Alex Frosch Stills within video © Theo Deproost
