Funded by the Arts Council and sponsors Autonomy, Beyond Ourselves will open at the Royal Society in London on April 2011. The exhibition brings together six contemporary artists who have placed the potential of enquiry and thought at the core of their work. Works include video, installations, sculpture, collage and paintings, which are to be displayed throughout the Royal Society building.

The origins of the Royal Society lie in an 'invisible college' of natural philosophers who began meeting in the mid-1640s to discuss the new philosophy of promoting knowledge of the natural world through observation and experiment, which we now call science.

The spirit of scientific enquiry is evident throughout the works which respond directly to man’s quest to understand the world and his place within it, with some marvelling at our physical laws and others playfully imagining how these might be overturned. Exploring man’s passionate engagement with both physics and philosophy on an everyday level, Beyond Ourselves aims to inspire a new approach for contemporary artists.

'These artists are encouraging the viewer to consider the role of imagination in our quest to understand the world better....... They are working within the realms of reflexion, hypothesis, philosophy and sensation and searching for new ways of expressing their compulsion to describe that which we do not yet know; presenting radical new views on how we see ourselves and how we could navigate our world with a new perspective.'

 - Ingrid Hinton, Curator