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The Bones Beneath the Face

 

In Edinburgh College of Art there is an old skull. We do not know where the skull came from or who it belongs to. It is a skull that comes with no name attached, no place, no story. All we know is that it has been at Edinburgh College of Art for a long time.

 

We undertook a project to tell the skull's story and, in so doing, come to know something about the once-living person whose skull this is (or was). 

 

We asked people, members of the public, to spend some time with skull, to handle it (gently and respectfully) and then to assemble a "still life" from the skull and other objects (a bunch of plastic red roses, an old map of Ireland, a glass coke bottle etc.) that somehow said something about the bones and the person whose living being once held them.

 

We also used the techniques of modern osteological research to try and find out something more about whose bones these may have been (or still are).  

 

This is what was created and discovered ...

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