Jonathan Webster aims to look at the similarities, differences and opportunities for mutual enrichment that lie between his medical and arts practices.
Technical medical science has been a revolutionary force for humankind, being instrumental in the doubling of life expectancy in 200 years, but this is not enough to doctor well. In medicine the frontier between the laboratory science that underpins it and the real world lies in flesh, blood and consciousness. Science has given us an astonishing technical understanding of how, for example, our liver enzymes change in response to different chemicals or how our lung capacity shrinks over time, but when a patient walks into a doctor’s office they do not feel these physiological changes they feel hope, envy, passion, fear, dread – and these are the currency of the arts.
Using sound, fabric, video, found objects, photography, writing, and performance his practice tries to tell humanistic stories about things that are universal: love, death, family, identity, compassion, culture, and connection.
Jonathan Webster (b. 1992, Croydon) is an artist and an academic junior doctor based in Leeds. He graduated with an MBBS from Newcastle University in 2017, and a Master in Research in Creative Practices from the Glasgow School of Art in 2015.
Recent exhibitions include: Three Words Tremble, solo show, serf, Leeds, 2018; Residual, group show, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow, 2017, No Expected Outcome, group show, iota arts space, Glasgow, 2016.
Recent artists talks include: Medicine Unboxed: Love, Gaps, Parabola Arts Centre, 2018; Medicine Unboxed: Wonder, Wunderkammer, Parabola Arts Centre, 2015 (video available here: https://vimeo.com/230757221)