When I visited London back in 1997 I went and saw 'Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection', The Royal Academy of Arts. The work of Damien Hirst - choice cuts of of animals preserved and presented in sealed, formaldehyde-filled, glass containers certainly made an impression. However I suspect that even he has been outdone on the erk scale. I saw this article about the Bodyworlds Exhibition on SBS's Dateline last night:

A human body, stripped of its skin sits atop the preserved carcass of a horse, proudly holding its brain in one hand and its heart in another. This is one of dozens of bodies on display at the grotesque Bodyworlds exhibition in London, which continues to enthral British visitors. These bodies are all real. They've undergone a process known as plastination - a process which turns flesh and bone into a permanent plastic form. But this exhibition has created a furore of protest from religious groups who see it as a cynical exploitation of the dead in the guise of art, but the man behind it is unrepentant.

PROFESSOR GUNTHER VON HAGENS: This exhibition is not about art or science, it's about instruction. Instruction in the fullest sense of the word - in that people attending the exhibition can realise their own vulnerability.

The footage of the process by which bodies are plastinated was more something one would expect to see in an old horror movie - 30 day old unclaimed bodies lying in cement tubs while being pumped full of red liquid.

While I can understand the value of having these products as teaching tools, that's where I would prefer they stay. It would appear that the plastination carried out at the Kyrgyzstan's Academy of Medical Science is often conducted bodies not claimed from the morgue. If that is the case, the person did not agree to have their body subjected to the process, not then used in either an instructional or artistic manner. I can appreciate artists that encourage us to find beauty in unexpected places, or challenge us to think about at "taboo" subjects such as death. But I just don't think we need to go this far, and certainly not with subjects that were never consulted.