(LIVERPOOL) - "Designer" hymens, an ear grafted on to an arm and a tiny jacket composed of skin cells make for one of the strangest contributions to this year's events for the European City of Culture.

The "sk-interfaces" exhibition mounted by FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology based in this northwest English city, is not for the faint-hearted.

Curator Jens Hauser has brought together 17 artists from Austria, Australia, the United States, Poland, France and Germany.

They include Orlan, a French woman who is truly prepared to suffer for her art, having undergone surgery several times to have implants inserted into unusual areas of her face, such as cheek implants into her temples.

Visitors to Liverpool are spared the blood which is liberally splashed over photographs on her website -- instead she has crafted "Harlequin Coat", a jacket just a few centimetres (inches) long from a mixture of her own skin cells and animal cells. It is supposed "to symbolise cultural cross breeding".

American artist Julia Reodica, a qualified nurse, has produced designer hymens using her own vaginal tissue, which are displayed in jewellery boxes.

The idea is to show "how different cultures value female virginity and the associated pressures," the organisers said in a statement.

And a video installation shows in detail Austria-based artist Stelarc undergoing an operation to have an extra ear grafted on to his arm.

Laura Sellars, the head of programmes at FACT, denies that the exhibition is merely seeking shock value.

"Artists have always wanted to use the new available tools from the Renaissance onwards, that's the way we have approached it. We haven't tried to be sensational," she said.

Some artists called in scientists to help them achieve their creations.

John Hunt, a tissue engineer from the University of Liverpool, said: "We could provide the resources and the expertise that needed to be applied to their ideas.

"You have that scientific expertise and they want to apply it to something completely unscientific.

"It was great. In the build-up to presenting the work in the gallery, there was an excitement that got greater and greater all the time."

"Sk-interfaces" runs until March 30 at FACT in Liverpool.

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