Before beginning a successful career as an artist, Heath studied philosophy at King’s College, London (1983-86), and this attention to the processes of perception and making has certainly influenced the way he makes his art. For Anatomy Acts, Heath has mined archives of stereoscopic photography, which enables the viewer to perceive a striking sense of depth in images of the human body. In these, he says, ‘images of the long-dead seem to have an almost tactile presence.’ While looking at The Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Anatomy and Thomson’s Stereoscopic Atlas of the Eye’ in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, he utilised 3D computer software to make digital drawings based on pictures of the human eye, pelvis, and thorax. This was done in collaboration with the ‘Hands On’ team of researchers (formerly ‘Tacitus’) at Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh. This tool allows one to draw freehand in virtual space, on a desktop scale. Heath’s drawings are a way of studying the spaces within the sources images, in particular the empty spaces created by dissection. Members of the public can re-enter these views by means of a large, specially designed stereographic viewer, through which you can see a new image created by the artist.

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