In 1994, Christine Borland, who has died aged 61 of cancer, opened her first solo exhibition at Tramway in Glasgow. Its starting point was a mail-order catalogue through which human skeletons could be legally purchased for medical teaching.
The discovery that a person’s remains could be bought anonymously through the post gave rise to one of the defining questions of her career. Working with forensic experts, police and medical professionals, Borland attempted to reconstruct the life behind one such skeleton, producing a bronze facial reconstruction alongside the original bones.
