Health chiefs pud an end to show with human blood

Edinburgh Evening News Saturday 12 Feb 2005

A GRUESOME art exhibition involving a human-blood black pudding has been cancelled by city health inspectors.
Glasgow-based artists John Beagles and Graham Ramsay were planning to cook the pudding, made from a mixture of their own blood, at a performance art festival at the Royal Scottish Academy this afternoon.

But the festival’s organisers said the show had been abandoned after environmental health officers decided to investigate. And the National Galleries of Scotland also put a stop to the performance, part of the five-day Body Parts festival. A spokeswoman for NGS said: "Following a risk assessment, it was felt that, in the interests of hygiene and public safety, the live performance should not go ahead."

Kate Downie, president of the Society of Scottish Artists, added: "The city council sent an environmental health officer to see what they were doing. They kicked up an incredible stink and said there is no way you can do this. "I think they made the assumption we would be sloshing human blood all over the place. Originally they were going to be slicing it up and offering it around to the audience, not with the intention that anybody would actually eat it."

Beagles and Ramsay, who previously exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, were set to combine a pint of blood each with traditional black pudding ingredients such as barley and suet.
Mr Beagles, 34, said the puddings, pre-cooked, would still form part of an exhibition at the gallery.