Two people are planning to donate their deceased bodies to an art project devised by one of Scotland's leading contemporary artists.

The pair have agreed to allow former Turner Prize nominee Christine Borland to use their corpses in the unusual art project.

Borland, who is working with US artist Brody Condon on the work, is opening an exhibition in Glasgow this week which will examine how the work will develop.

The two potential donors - who are visiting the show, Circles of Focus at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, this week - are expected to formally enter into an agreement with the artists and alter their wills to make their acceptance official.

Their dead bodies will then be used in the "final phase" of the multi-year project.

Instead of agreeing to a purely anatomical bequest, the two - who at present are keeping their identity private - would allow their corpses to be imprinted with the rough and angular surface of a clay sculpture which the artists recently made at the Cove Park artist residency in Argyll and Bute earlier this year.

Borland and Condon fired 400 clay pieces in a turf-walled kiln, using a technique based on reconstructed Neolithic practice, in collaboration with Orcadian potter Andrew Appleby.

The donor's bodies would be placed on the clay in a controlled environment in the anatomy department of a university.

One of the results of hypostasis or livor mortis, where the body, after death, retains imprint from the objects it touches, would then take place.

The clay, geometric shapes would make a permanent mark on the skins of their corpses.

Hypostasis marks often form an important part of crime scene analysis.

Borland, said the work was inspired by her time researching in anatomy departments.

"We immediately noticed, and were intrigued by, the unexpected indentations on the surface of the donor bodies, these geometric shapes were in sharp contrast to the most organic of materials, the human body," she said.

"The shapes had been created by the hypostatic process that occurs when blood stops flowing and moves to the lowest gravitational point, leaving an indelible impression of whatever surface the body was resting on at the time."

This result of the project will not be viewed by the public, however.

Only technical staff, and potentially the artists, involved in the process as well as students of anatomy who would use the bodies for their studies, would see the marks on the bodies.

Condon said that there would be no "sensationalism" over the use of the bodies.

A Circle of Focus Trust is being established to perform the act should the artists die before the donors.

Condon added: "We may die before they do, and so we have to come to terms with the fact that we may never the final phase of the project.

"But if they agree to the proposal there will be no final exhibition showing human tissue."

Borland: "We are not even calling it an exhibition, when it happens, it will be an art work, or 'the final phase of the project.'"

Borland, who was short listed for the Turner Prize in 1997, said the two potential donors approached her two years ago after she delivered a lecture at a university on her project.

She said: "They had both signed up as donors to anatomy, and they said the kind of process that I was proposing they would absolutely love to pursue, and they wanted to talk about it more."

Both artists have performed considerable research at the anatomy department at Glasgow University, working with senior lecturer Dr Quentin Fogg.

One donor has already said he or she "fully supports" the project.

The other has written that he or she is in a quandary about the project and while emotionally and intellectually stimulated by the project, Circle of Focus has "focussed my mind and imagination on those living in close proximity to my heart."