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*A recurring criticism of the Britart generation is that the conceptual work - particularly of Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn and the Chapman Brothers - displays a morbid and overly prurient fascination with death. And yet however shocking the pickled shark, cows and sheep may have been, Damien Hirst never considered displaying real dead people in an art gallery.
Body Worlds is a touring show, the work of controversial anatomist Professor Gunther Von Haagens, inventor of plastination. The process involves replacing all the of the bodily fluids with plastic resin, which hardens and allows the preserved flesh, skin and sinews to be shaped and moulded into what Professor Von Haagens claims to be naturalistic poses. In fact, the results are often surreal - one cadaver, brain and muscles exposed, appears to be contemplating his next move on a chess board; another answers the phone.
The Professor claims that far from being a freak show, Body Worlds is an educational experience, and a celebration of the awesome complexity of the human body.
The exhibition has attracted huge crowds around the world - but has also left a trail of controversy - the London show was preceded by a commons debate and the threat of an injunction from the health secretary.
To discuss Body Worlds I'm was joined by art historian Lyn Nead and Professor Colin Blakemore, from the Department of Physiology at Oxford University, author of the Oxford Companion to the Body.
Body Worlds opened at the Atlantis Gallery in east London on 22 March and will run until 29 September
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*While the fall of apartheid meant new democratic freedoms for the majority of the South African people, it also prompted collective head scratching by one section of society. Many writers celebrated as dissidents under apartheid - including JM Coetzee, Andre Brink and Nadime Gordimer - suddenly had to refocus their artistic sights, after so long set on a repressive regime.
The playwright Athol Fugard was perhaps the most consistently eloquent voice of protest for more than three decades. A white Afrikaner, Fugard began writing to express the injustice he witnessed in South African courtrooms where he worked as a legal clerk.
A new play by Athol Fugard - called Sorrows and Rejoicing - has opened in London and continues at the Tricycle Theatre until 20 April. It's an exploration of the legacy of apartheid, told through the eyes of three women - the wife, the servant lover and the illegitimate daughter - of a recently deceased liberal poet, who returned home to die after years in exile.
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*Sit down in a Hull hairdressers chair or a Humberside taxi seat, and you'll be handed a leaflet urging a visit to the world's first "Submarium" which opened in the city this morning. Look up Submarium in a dictionary though, and you won't find it. It's been concocted to describe "The Deep", the 拢45 million aquarium on the banks of the Humber.
Designed by the architect Sir Terry Farrell, The Deep is - from the outside at least - a striking architectural statement amidst a city lacking landmarks.
Front Row visited The Deep in Hull earlier this week, as did Hugh Pearman, architecture critic of the Sunday Times - and Roger Deakin, author of Waterlog, a book about his experiences of swimming across England.
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*Pianist Stan Tracey is regarded as one of the jazz heavyweights, and as a British musician and composer - a rarity on the international jazz stage.
Now in his seventy-fifth year, Stan Tracey is about to embark on another live tour - with his drummer son Clark, a respected jazzman in his own right. The two jazz generations have collaborated for the first time ever on a composition, the first new work from Stan Tracey in many years.
When father and son came to the Front Row studio, I started by asking Tracey senior why he's come out of compositional retirement.
Stan and Clarke Tracey, take their new composition "Continental Drift" on the road, from Friday night, 22 March, in Gateshead, then London, Birmingham, Manchester, Wakefield and Cardiff.
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