Miranda's art work

My name is Miranda Loaptkin, I am an artist and I work as a freelancer running art workshops for the Learning Department.

My image for the show is called A Spark of Life...

'A spark of life into the lifeless thing' Volta 1781

I have taken the portrait of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein as my inspiration for this work, she wrote about a scientist named Dr. Frankenstein who tried to create a 'perfect' human being, although others saw it as a monster.

The fascination of trying to create a 'man machine' and confusing fable with fact has driven me to investigate the ways humans have crossed this boundary, specifically around the same period that Shelley would have written Frankenstein.

The novel Frankenstein was dreamt up by Shelly as a result of a challenge to come up with a ghost story by her friend Byron

Perhaps Shelley was influenced by the scientific experiments around 'animal electricity' that were being conducted at the time.

The scientist Volta is credited with trying out Galvani's experiment with electricity and frogs’, where by it was discovered that he could make the legs of the dead frog twitch.

Volta eventually worked out that the wet muscle tissue conducted a current between the copper and zinc metals he was using. The voltic pile that came out of this discovery was the first battery.

My image, A Spark of Life juxtaposes different worlds creating an image that merges drawn line with photography, creating a new place where facts and fiction collide, where we view the figure through his trace in this distorted world.


Miranda Lopatkin