Jenni Fagan: Library of Bones at Summerhall

Originally a brewery and then a Vet School, Edinburgh’s Summerhall is now an impressive hive of creative activity. Visiting for the first time, I made my way slowly around the vast building, exploring the nooks and cutouts that you come to expect from 18th century architecture.

Up on the first floor on my way to the Lab Gallery, I was delighted to spot Jenni Fagan’s ‘Library of Bones’. Spread across two display cases, it isn’t immediately obvious that you’re looking at bones, until you see the skull.

…I was looking for things that aren’t seen, or known about and someone mentioned the bones in the attic, another person said not to talk about that and a third added that they were ‘inferior,’ bones, leftover by the vets when they moved to their new premises.

It was exactly what I was looking for, I spent hours lifting boxes of bones down to my study and then the following year — teaching myself how to engrave them, with poetry I had written in my residency, paint them and then fill the engraved areas with gold.

Art meets science. A bridge appears between past and present. All things have purpose. There were many secrets in the bone library. Now there is poetry. Time moves on.

Jenni Fagan

Fagan painted the bones black and engraved them using gold paint and words from her poems. It is an inspired way of immortalising animals in a former veterinary school.

I personally would have liked to see more bones included in the collection and had more detailed information about both Fagan’s process and how she chose which bones to use.

Library of Bones is on permanent display at Summerhall.

Find out more about Jenni Fagan. Find out more about Summerhall.