Art gallery

Many modern artists take us into territory that disgusts us. They look behind the scenes of our sanitised, packaged lives and face us with the bloody, dirty, smelly reality. For them, rubbish, sex, ageing flesh, slaughter, birth and death are art — reality is art.

A selection of images will be added to the gallery over the next few weeks.

FEATURED ARTISTS:

Hermann Nitsch
Nitsch is an Austrian performance artist who uses blood, intestines and ritual animal slaughter in his works of art, or 'actions'. His use of live animals, as well as extensive representation of crucifixion and other Christian symbols, makes his work extremely controversial.

Stuart Brisley
A 'curator of shit', Brisley has been an anti-hygiene artist for 30 years. Like Nitsch, he believes that denying the visceral reality of what is around us, including vomit, blood and shit, demeans the wholeness of the human experience.

Marlene Dumas
South African born, Dumas now lives and works in Europe's pornography capital, Amsterdam. Her works — large canvases portraying men and women in states of sexual readiness — have also been termed pornographic. She sees them as beautiful and funny, a celebration of the contradictions which surround our sexuality.

Sarah Lucas
One of the best-known young British artists, Lucas challenges sexual stereotypes in her work. Using sculpture, photography and installations, Lucas denies the idea that sex is disgusting. Her art attempts to reflect life as it is lived — messy, funny, pathetic and full of contradictions.

Melanie Manchot
A German artist now living and working in London, Manchot's work looks at different aspects of disgust. Her collection of kisses illustrates how we are repelled by the thought of intimacy with a stranger. Her photographs of her ageing, naked mother force us to confront our fears about growing old, as well as our perceptions of what is, and can be, beautiful.

Tracey Emin
Emin's art is described as 'confessional'. Drawing on her own experiences, Emin examines the nature of sexuality and mortality. With her bed sculpture, simply an unmade bed, with dirty sheets, surrounded by empty bottles and other waste, Emin takes everyday dirt and garbage and displays it in an everyday sense, asking why we are still disgusted by it.

Damien Hirst
Hirst once said that wiping one's bottom was a kind of self portrait. His unusual take on life — and more importantly death — have made him one of the most famous young modern British artists. His trademark dead animal sculptures tackle head on the gulf between what we eat and where it comes from. But the works are also disturbing in that they reveal the fragile nature of animals', and our own, bodies.

Bill Viola
Viola believes that art should be experienced. It is not solely the preserve of the intellect. His Nantes Triptych, a video installation showing a woman giving birth, a man suspended in water and a very old woman on her death bed, arouses strong emotions. The feelings of disgust aroused by the process of giving birth and by that of dying, illustrate just how far we try to protect ourselves from the physical reality of life.

Hermann Nitsch: Six-day performance, Prinzendorf, August 1998.

Stuart Brisley: Leaching out at the Intersection, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1981.

Sarah Lucas: Two Fried Eggs and A Kebab, 1992 © Sarah Lucas; courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London.

Bill Viola: Between Cinema and a Hard Place. Tate. Purchased with assistance from the Patrons of New Art through the Tate Gallery Foundation and from the National Art Collections Fund, 1994.