'Facing Death' - Death Masks

Nick Reynolds, of the band Alabama 3, is one of the few people still practising the ancient art of creating death masks today. He has his own company, Memorial Casts. Two of his iconic masks are in Highgate Cemetery East (They are his father, Great Train Robbery mastermind Bruce Reynolds, and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren).

As we approach Halloween, Nick will regale us with tales of his introduction into the business, via fishing the dead out of the sea during the Falklands War, and recount the history of this fascinating topic.

There will be plenty of time to peruse the paintings and specimens, from 6:30pm, before Nick's talk.

“About Face” is a multidisciplinary series of events focusing on the face in a medical-humanities arena. The delicate ontological balancing act between life and death, public display and spectacle, ‘being’ and ‘not being’, and how we identify, are some of topics which inspired “About Face” at QMUL’s Pathology Museum. From the first recorded facial surgery in approximately 600 BC to the present, faces have been moulded, manipulated and even made from scratch. Why is this part of the physical body considered our ‘identity’ and what does that mean? In the world of the selfie, are our faces even our selves? What do we see when we look at the faces of others? Does our opinion change depending on the face? Why?

Topics included in this series include face transplants, ‘faces of fear’, facial surgery then and now, death masks and the forensic reconstruction of a skull from this collection. All events include wine, non-alcoholic drinks and nibbles, as well as a chance to see the "Saving Faces" paintings by Mark Gilbert.