A ground-breaking interactive artwork by video artist and University of Bristol AHRC Research Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts Terry Flaxton comes to Bristol Cathedral this week.  In Other People’s Skins, which takes its inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, opens to the public on Tuesday 1 April.

Using experimental High Definition technology, the installation explores the spiritual possibilities of the dinner table and cross-cultural and religious boundaries.  At the heart of the cathedral will be a table set up for supper with 12 virtual diners, whose life-sized hands and arms will appear as projected images that play across the surface of the table.  Visitors are invited to take a seat and, as the ethereal images flow over their own skin, they will inhabit the skin and movement of another person, blurring the lines between the real and the virtual.

This ambitious installation is part of a national tour of seven cathedrals across the south of England.  After Bristol, Terry Flaxton’s work will go to Wells Cathedral, Southwark Cathedral and Bath Abbey.

Of his new work, Terry Flaxton said: “The act of eating together and sharing food is a universal human experience which crosses all cultural and religious boundaries, and the dinner table is the site where so much human communication takes place.  The intention is not to create a piece based in any particular religion – on the contrary, the idea is to transcend religious divides and seek that which unites us.”

Terry Flaxton has been a video artist since 1976, as well as an acclaimed cinematographer.  His work has been screened on TV, exhibited at festivals worldwide and has received numerous awards and nominations.  He teaches regularly at the University of the West of England, Bath Spa, Goldsmith’s, Dundee and Westminster Universities.  Terry recently took up the position of Research Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Bristol's Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, a post funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The exhibition is open to the public from Tuesday 1 April to Sunday 13 April.

In Other People’s Skins is funded by Arts Council England.