Poetry & Science
Valerie has received a £30,000 Arts Award from The Wellcome Trust, to be shared with artist Susan Aldworth, and sculptor Eleanor Crook.
The award will fund six months of a new project in London, which will involve researching pathology at the group's residency at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, and with scientists at Kings College London Medical School, to produce cross-disciplinary work for public exhibition and publication.
A unique opportunity to have access to cutting edge medical science, the award was given partly on the merits of the collaborative project, This Fatal Subject, and partly on the participants' track records and achievements, including their joint residency at the Gordon Museum of Pathology.
Read more about This Fatal Subject
One of Valerie Laws' poetic innovations, the embedded haiku, welcomes visitors to the Knowledge & Information Centre (KIC) at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. The Window of Art consists of nine central panels featuring continuous lines of poetry and illustrations. Within each poem is an embedded haiku which is illuminated, using innovative electroluminescent (EL) technology. The four poems are interspersed with illustrations based on medical macro photography, which echo the themes of the four poems.
Read more about the Windows of Art
In 2002, Valerie Laws acheived world-wide notoriety when she received a Northern Arts grant to spray paint words on to sheep, for a project which bridged art and science, creating random poetry and at the same time illustrating the workings of the universe.
Read more about the Quantum Sheep experiment and about Quantum Sheep - the poetry collection.
Poetry & Science: This Fatal Subject, Windows of Art and Quantum Sheep