Well, it has to be said, art can sometimes be difficult to understand.
But it's often used to help better understand things we don't know much about.
Tom Clarke takes a look at one artist who is proof that the way to a man's art is through his stomach.
Many artists strive to project their innermost selves into their work -- on canvas, in photographs or sculpture.
Artist Phillip Warnell does so quite literally.
His work, part exhibition, part experiment, exploits the latest technology to boldly go where art has never been before.
I mean I've got a great interest in the everyday and, you know, all of us, all of the time are going through some kind of digestive process.
It's an ever-present; it's an, you know, inherent part of our existence.
Well, here's the device that's very much at the center of this afternoon's performance.
It's a capsule endoscope. Now, it's in a sterile housing right now.
But in that is a pill about the size of the end of my little finger.
Now, that's equipped with a microscopic camera with a tiny flash that takes about two pictures every second of the artist's alimentary canal.
There's also a radio transmitter that beams those images through the gut wall, through the artist's body to sensors on the outside.
So the journey begins. Muscles squeeze the pill down the esophagus towards the artist's stomach.
Minutes later, the presence moves from the esophagus into the stomach.
This is where food is normally broken down. To keep the pictures clear, Warnell has fasted for 24 hours.
But the pill doesn't want to leave his stomach, so he decides to eat something -- a few bites of pasta -- to encourage the camera on its way.
An hour and a half passes and the pill hasn't budged.
The artist terminates the performance so his collaborator, a gastroenterologist, can explain to the audience what they're seeing before it's time to go home.
It does very much fit with our attempt to enlighten and educate the public about what we do and to try to demystify a lot of this.
New technology helps arts meet science in new ways,
but like the public operating theaters of old, Warnell's work continues a tradition of satisfying a common curiosity of who we are inside.