Archives for posts with tag: Brompton Cemetery Chapel

Return to the Stars

March 7, 2026 //
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I am delighted to have work included in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead showing at Hypha Studios, Gallery One, 1 Poultry, London.

Curated by Maria Hinel, the exhibition invites audiences to consider the lives of animals as sentient beings capable of communication, organisation and even vengeance. Dismantling the vision of non-human animals as voiceless and inert, the works in different ways grant them a space to act – to signal their unrest, seek freedom and express grievance. Drawing on the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk and the works of William Blake, the exhibition asks what forms of empathy might emerge when animals are recognised as ethical and political agents in their own right.

I have seen the 2017 film Spoor based on the book and the incredible Complicite production and read the brilliant book so it is wonderful to be in an exhibition drawing on this novel.

Artists include: Francis Alÿs | Sara Anstis | Odonchimeg Davaadorj | Susan Eyre | Andy Holden | Jochen Lempert | Kat Lyons | Anne Marie Maes | Tiziana Pers |Amalia Pica & Rafael Ortega | Bryndìs Snæbjörnsdóttir & Mark Wilson.

I will be showing the two channel video Radical Pair 2023 04:48 min.
Research has proven that many animals, including birds, bees and even bacteria use the Earth’s magnetic field to orientate themselves, sometimes in conjunction with the sun and the stars. 

In the context of this exhibition, Radical Pair highlights the very different and subtle ways animals experience the world that we share. Considering the perspectives of fellow creatures is a step towards building alliances between humans and non-humans in a damaged world, as expressed by Donna Haraway in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016) where she urges humans to build a non-hierarchical, and interdependent world embracing all beings as part of complex, interconnected systems.

I had a wonderful day at the Royal Astronomical Society delivering my talk Revealing the Unseen as part of the symposium bringing together voices from art and science to celebrate the exhibition Cosmos: the art of observing space currently on show in Bristol at the Royal West of England Academy.

Alongside myself speakers included:
Professor Mike Lockwood, President Royal Astronomical Society who regaled us with some extraordinary astronomical facts such as the concept that light does not travel and experiences no time passing. | Ren Renwick, Director of the RWA who was happily able to promote Cosmos as one of the most successful exhibitions at the RWA | Ione Parkin RWA, curator of Cosmos: the art of observing space who expressed for all of us the human fascination for the mysteries of the universe as well as a look at the evocative planetary surfaces of her own work| Dr Sian Prosser, archivist at the RAS who shared her motivation for the library to be active in the production of knowledge and not just a repository for artefacts. | Kate Bernstein, book artist who gave an insight into her making process and collaboration with the RAS. | Lynda Laird, multidisciplinary photographic artist who explained the research behind her installation celebrating the astronomical discoveries of Caroline Herschel | Johanna Love, artist, academic and researcher who revealed a microscopic world of dust and mysterious asteroids explored through drawing. | Annie Cattrell RSA FRSS, interdisciplinary artist who shared her research and inspiration leading to the creation of many impressive large scale installations that explore ways of experiencing what is generally out of reach. | Christopher Le Brun PPRA Hon RWA, internationally renowned painter who spoke about how he uses the motif of the moon as a means to explore light and dark, a push and pull, through the medium of paint. |  Ian Chamberlain RWA RE, printmaker and researcher who delved into how time is relevant in his deeply observational etchings | Louise Beer, artist and curator who spoke from the heart on the importance of dark skies to feel a connection to the cosmos. | Gillian Adair McFarland, visual artist and researcher who shared her dynamic process of creating imagined planets from blown glass. | Amaury Triaud, Professor of Exoplanetology at the University of Birmingham, who talked about his passion for bringing art into the laboratory and science into the gallery.

I am very pleased to have been invited to contribute an article for the current issue of Interalia Magazine Cosmos and Visions of Light – An online magazine, edited by Richard Bright. This issue, explores, among other things, art and cosmological phenomena; light and pattern; geometrical shapes and mathematical laws; information and radio astronomy; topology and wormholes; colour and evolution.

Contributions include interviews with Louise Beer and Ben Rowe; articles by Ione Parkin, Chris Wood, Susan Eyre, Geraldine Cox, Steven Giovinco, Siobhan McDonald, Florian Neukart, John Etnyre, Enrique Gaztanaga, Jonathan Goldenberg, Csanád Horváth & Natasha Hurley-Walker.

Following an application to the ArtEO Earth Stories Open Call I have been invited to join the ArtEO R&D Community. ArtEO helps artists to work with environmental data and imagery, connecting them with tools and expertise to help tell Earth’s story. Although I wasn’t included in the funded programme, this online initiative sounds like it could offer some exciting opportunities. It has been designed for artists who want to work at the intersection of art and Earth Observation (EO) and aims to offer access to specialised tools, selected ArtEO and curated EO data, workshops and events alongside a network of peer artists and technical experts. Image credit ESA and NASA Earth Observatory.

In the studio

I have finished adding copper pieces and applying patination ink to the new tablet in the Instruments of the Anemoi series of concrete tablets. These sculptures reflect on early means of navigation. This one looks at wind rose origins and replaces one I made earlier.

Work in progress for upcoming exhibition Strange Company: at the Safehouses. Alluding to Oscar Wilde’s familiar quote We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars, this work considers the otherworlds inhabited by creatures of the gutter as exotic places of discovery. I am experimenting with making models based on the platonic solids that represent water and air as speculative modular living capsules for space exploration.

I have made some decisions and printed the text for The Book of Reversals – an artist’s book that offers a poetic interpretation of the creation of Earth’s turbulent magnetic field, its liability to flip poles and how the secrets of the inner core have been discovered through seismic tremors. I have printed the text in a vertical format to echo the lines of the magnetic stripes secreted in the minerals by spreading lava on ocean floor.

I have been experimenting with crystal spheres, iron half spheres and different sands. I’m not sure where these ideas might be going as yet. There is something planetary and spectrographic about these.

It was rather a surprise to realise I have been at Thames-side Studios for 10 years! Taking my first studio here after completing my MA. From labyrinthine depths with no natural light, to nearer the print studio with a half share, to my own space but no window and finally to where I am now with skylight and window. It’s brilliant to have Thames-side Print Studio just up the corridor from my studio and also The Gate Dark Room and London Sculpture Workshop on site, plus the amazing gallery that I’ve been lucky to show in. I love the community here.

Out and About and Online

Mapping the heliosphere, the huge bubble created by the Sun’s wind that encapsulates our entire solar system – IMAP spacecraft was launched September 2025 to measure interplanetary magnetic fields and solar wind particles.

I popped into Thames-side Gallery to see Disturbances a group show embracing interruption and disturbance as a catalyst to shift perspective. I was impressed by the large collaged work of Caroline Macdonald which is combination of digital print and monoprint, and Benjamin Deakin’s surreal super realist paintings.

I enjoyed the selection of films showing in Deep Focus: Terrains: Ecosystems at Goldsmiths Cinema. Looking at varied and personal approaches to landscape. I liked the idea of Tom Faber’s The Hiding Place as questioning whether the character was influencing the weather through their own emotional state or was being influenced by the weather. This didn’t come across to me in the film but I really liked the drama of the film where sequences of extreme weather were suddenly scrunched up as if on a painted canvas. This techno wizardry is done using Blender. It was also great to see Deborah Tchoudjinoff’s latest digital film, in her world building series, based on a future where certain minerals have become extinct. This one is The City of Coal and instead of a dark gritty place, it is full of light, set in the bowl of an inactive volcano where the last block of coal is enshrined in a baurtiful translucent block, like an ice cube. What once seemed ubiquitous, burnt without conscience is now held up as a marvellous relic. All the forests that went into making the seams of coal are gone, in their place are new forms of hybrid trees.

On the Other Earth at Stone Nest a 57-minute 3D, 360° installation places you at the heart of a virtual performance. Surrounded by a 3D panoramic LED environment, you can see every detail as hyperreal dancers from Company Wayne McGregor and the Hong Kong Ballet move around you. Right in the middle of the 3D action, it’s hard not to move out of the way a a dancer passes right up to and though you. I really like the section when the dancers were all upside down, like bats, but dressed in white and when they leaped it was like they flew momentarily. Wonderful.

Some beautiful and thoughtful experiences in Infinite Bodies examining how Wayne McGregor’s work responds to the evolving relationship between the human body and technology. Human still wins. Thankfully.

Dr. Susan Pyne gave a talk at the Royal Astronomical Society Celebrating Women Astronomers. For centuries, women astronomers made discoveries that were often overlooked or credited to men. Focusing on five of the many women who transformed our understanding of the Universe she reminded us how very difficult it was for women to advance in the field of astronomy, firstly being denied education and admittance to university, but even once admitted, not being awarded a degree despite studying for it, having to leave employment on marriage, not being allowed to use the instruments at an observatory. It was a long slow road to the first woman Astronomer Royal, Prof. Michele Dougherty, being appointed just last year. Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), famous for her discovery of comets was the first woman to be paid a salary as an astronomer; Annie Maunder (1868-1947) who persevered as a human computer at Greenwich, recorded the first evidence of the movement of the sunspot emergence from the poles toward the equator over the 11-year solar cycle and published The Heavens and Their Story in 1908; Cecilia Payne (1900-1979) determined that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium.

Illuminating tour of Brompton Cemetery Catacombs. These subterranean tunnels offered the Victorians – status, security and sentimentality when body snatchers were rife. The lead lined coffins were supposed to be airtight, preserving the body within, but many it seems were not.

I also had a chance for another quick look at the majestic octagonal Cemetery Chapel where I will be having a solo show later in the year.

Listening to the Inside Science podcast Should we rethink navigating by GPS? I was fascinated to hear that a report from the Royal Institute of Navigation recommends teaching sailors to navigate by the stars again as a top priority.

Reliance on satellite GPS is no longer viable in a world of conflict where jamming and spoofing of GPS is putting maritime and aviation safety and security in jeopardy. All countries have their own GPS systems but all are vulnerable to interference. The satellites are 20km away, twice the diameter of the earth, but are basically a 5okw lightbulb in space which is very easy to drown out with more local noise. It is now also easy to spoof a position with software readily available online. As well as ships these jamming and spoofing signals are effecting1500 planes a day which have to reset and counter spoof signals, also trains, mobile phones and anything that accesses GPS can be effected. There are technological solutions that can be put in place to determine where the signal is coming from but it looks like there will forever be a need to read the stars.

The program goes on to look at satellites under fire from solar weather which can also effect navigation systems. Predicting space weather is difficult but Imperial College London have developed some magnetic field detector instruments which are on the Solar Orbiter probe, speeding through space, to give us more warning about solar activity which could affect us here on earth and be valuable info for the safety of the next launch to the moon.

I have also been enjoying the first series of For All Mankind which was originally aired in 2019. The series dramatizes an alternate history depicting “what would have happened if the global space race had never ended” after the Soviet Union succeeds in the first crewed Moon landing ahead of the United States. It is entertaining TV, some nice 60’s/70’s sets and what if scenarios.

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From Dark Circumstance

January 19, 2026 //
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I am thrilled to have work included in Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space curated by Ione Parkin showing at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol. Delivered in partnership with the Royal Astronomical Society, this exhibition offers a unique journey through time, imagination, and inquiry – inviting you to experience the awe, wonder, and curiosity that the cosmos continues to inspire. 

Image: Michael Porter RWA, Impossible Landscape 15-05-25

Featured artists:
Kate Bernstein 🌖 Annie Cattrell 🌖 Ian Chamberlain RWA 🌖 Richard Cox 🌖 Geraldine Cox 🌖 Susan Derges 🌖 Otto Dettmer 🌖 Sarah Duncan 🌔 Susan Eyre 🌕 Anna Gillespie RWA 🌖 Tom Hammick 🌖 Alex Hartley 🌖 Simon Hitchens RWA 🌖 Janette Kerr RWA HRSA 🌖 Melanie King 🌖 Tania Kovats 🌖 Ulrike Kuchner 🌖 Lynda Laird 🌖 Christopher Le Brun RA RWA 🌖 Johanna Love 🌖 Gillian McFarland 🌖 Rachael Nee RWA 🌖 Pale Blue Dot Collective (Louise Beer and John Hooper) 🌖 Cornelia Parker 🌖 Ione Parkin RWA 🌖 Michael Porter RWA 🌖 Ben Rowe MRSS RWA 🌖 Robin Sewell 🌖 Jane Sheppard 🌖 Yinka Shonibare 🌖 Karl Singporewala RWA RIBA 🌖 Wolfgang Tillmans

My works in the exhibition include The Azimuth Obelisk (of Sedimentary Knowledge), a reimagining of an obelisk operating as a permanent azimuth mark, from which the drift of the magnetic North Pole is monitored; Orbital a multiscreen installation looking at the interaction between space weather and Earth’s magnetic field; 92 Years Measured in Light, a reflection on time spent on Earth in relation to the vastness of the cosmos and Sun Factor, a look at sun worship and a reminder of the Sun’s true power.

Install in progress.

I enjoyed a site visit to Brompton Cemetery Chapel on a bright frosty morning with curator Catherine Li to plan a future exhibition at this magnificent Grade II listed building. Entering the glass domed chapel is entering a space both hushed and echoing. Concentric circles in varying shades of bath stone span the floor circled by eight giant Corinthian columns. Built in 1842 the eight-sided building is said to represent life on earth, while its lofty dome suggests heaven. Early ideas for the exhibition are thinking about ‘way finding’ in terms of physical and spiritual navigation to find a path or direction.

Brompton Cemetery offers a rich site for discovery of the many symbols used to represent the passage from life to death, to comfort, grieve and express love. I was particularly taken by the beautiful sun dial with the inscription YET A LITTLE WHILE IS THE LIGHT WITH YOU

Lessons in electrons.

I listened to an archive episode from In Our Time Pauli’s Exclusion Principle

The Pauli Exclusion Principle proposes that no two electrons in an atom can be in the same configuration at the same time, and it helps explain a wide range of phenomena such as the electron shell structure of atoms. This principle explains the chemical behaviour of the elements and why matter is stable. At the beginning of the 19th century the elements were ordered in the periodic table by mass and it was noted that inert elements appeared very regularly in the table with active elements either side – a periodic occurrence of common properties, hence the name. It was found that if you heated the elements, each element emitted light of a specific colour which became known as the spectra.

The internal workings of the atom were discovered to consist of negatively charged electrons whirling around a positively charged nucleus but the metaphor of a miniature solar system based on gravity was inaccurate. It is hard to get away from imagining this image. It was Niels Bohr who realised that electrons were not free to travel anywhere but are restricted to ‘orbits’ – a helpful analogy is to think in terms of a ladder where an electron can be on a high rung with high energy or a low rung with low energy but can’t be between rungs. Electrons can jump from a high rung to a low rung and in so doing lose energy as light in a characteristic colour.

Pauli, a theoretical physicist, discovered that electrons cannot move to a place where there is already an electron and this is what gives rise to structure and the different chemical natures of the atoms. The different rungs on the ladder have different shapes and can accommodate different numbers of electrons. The bottom rung can only fit two electrons, if the rung has just 1 electron it is hydrogen, if it has 2 electrons it is helium and that rung is then full. Helium is chemically inert because that low rung is now full. The next rung up can hold about 10 electrons and when that is full that element is inert. Pauli also noticed that it was possible for electrons to have two values but couldn’t explain this – we now know this as spin – the electron can spin in different directions.

Photons do not have an exclusion principle, you can add more and more photons and make laser beams as intense as you like. I always wondered about Vantablack (the world’s blackest man-made substance, a coating of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes that absorbs up to 99.965% of visible light) and if it absorbs so much light where does it go and does the material get hot.

It’s nearly 10 years since the Laboratory of Dark Matters project when, thanks to astrophysicist Dr Cham Ghag and lab director Prof. Sean Paling, I was able to visit Boulby Underground Laboratory to meet scientists looking for dark matter over 1km underground on the N.E coast of England. Dark matter has still not been detected but is still thought to be some sort of particle. Direct detection methods have moved on from trying to detect a direct hit from a dark matter particle with an atom nucleus to looking for signs of electrons scattering from the target.

A surprise Christmas gift was a Van Der Graaf Generator which demonstrates ‘static’ electricity. Considering how the electrons caught up by the generator are rushing about desperately trying to get back to the earth it doesn’t sound very static. Electric current is simply electrons on the move. I’m not expecting quite such dramatic results as achieved by this 43-foot-tall experimental high-voltage Van de Graaff generator built at Round Hill, Massachusetts in 1933 as the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, but looking forward to trying some of the experiments.

In February 2023, the highest energy (around 220 million billion electron volts) neutrino ever detected (KM3-230213A) was spotted by the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope detector, a network of vertical strings with glass spheres holding sensitive Cherenkov radiation light detectors, submerged at great depths in the Mediterranean Sea. This neutrino had over 100 times higher energy than any other previously detected and its origin is still under investigation. High energy neutrinos travel in straight lines, unaffected by galactic magnetic fields, and so could point directly to their violent birthplace, offering insight into the universe’s most energetic processes. It may have been a cosmogenic neutrino, generated when powerful cosmic rays from deep space smash into gas clouds or photons in the interstellar medium creating these rare elusive particles, or from the universe’s most energetic phenomena, involving immense gravity, density, or explosive power, primarily driven by compact objects like black holes and neutron stars, or even decaying dark matter particles.

AI is not like us; the only way we can have a relationship with it, is for us to become like it.

I thought the ideas presented in the Gresham Lecture Becoming AI – Your Journey to Assimilation? gave a prescient perspective – we are so often focused on AI being trained or designed to be more like humans but are losing sight of the fact that it is we humans that are becoming more like AI, it is us that are changing how we communicate to adapt to the methods of the machine.

While thinking about minerals in clay and how pottery and bricks preserve the direction of the magnetic field in their minerals during the process of firing which heats and then cools the clay – the same process that occurs in a lava flow. Iron-bearing minerals (like magnetite) in clay become “magnetic” when heated in a kiln. As the pottery cools, these minerals lock into the Earth’s magnetic field direction and strength at that time.  I came across Rescued Clay, who transform discarded clay from construction sites into new narratives. Together with local communities, they shape this once-forgotten earth into objects, artworks, and spaces that preserve the memory of land, culture, and people, turning waste into stories worth keeping.

I was fascinated to read about the oldest rock found on Earth in Marcia Bjorerud’s little Geopedia compendium. The Acasta Gneiss complex dates from 4.03 billion years ago, any rock that formed on Earth before this time has been melted, obliterated or subducted through violent geologic and astral events save for a few tiny crystals of zircon. The first geologic interval on Earth has left no record. The age of the Earth is therefore determined by looking at the composition of meteorites and planets in the solar system that formed at the same time as Earth and have remained unchanged since. I find this mind blowing.

Diogenite meteorite NWA 7831

Out and About

Objects that slip Between the Floor and the Wall at Thames-side Studios Gallery. Some playful works and I particularly enjoyed Eleanor Bedlow’s Push Pull that embodies that idea so well, Jane Millar’s impossibly spikey ceramics with the most gorgeous glazes, the skewed geometrics of Johanna Bolton, morphing oversized beads of Janet Currier and mad Mountain View of Sandra Lane.

Noémie Goudal The Story of Fixity, an Artangel commission at Borough Yards. Three large screens layered with cut out shapes, that add a 3D staging to the film projections which cycle every 15 minutes through lush vegetation, whiting out to fading painted backdrops and water cascading in rivulets or vaporous spray and dark rocks. Water also drips from the ceiling pooling and staining large steel plates on the floor. The sound is layered like a deep forest. Haunting and beautifully captivating.

Prof. Mike Lockwood gave a talk at the Royal Astronomical Society on Aurora borealis observations over the past 400 years in part inspired by the events of 10/11th May 2024 when the aurora was seen by many people across the UK at extremely low latitudes. It is estimated that this aurora in May 2024 was the third most extensive seen in the past 400 years.

Earth’s magnetic field is constantly moving and this has a major effect on where aurorae occur.

It is thought the vision of Ezekiel in the old testament was possibly a red coronal aurora seen in Nippur (Iraq) as it tallies with Assyrian and Babylonian documents which date it at 12th March 567BCE.

In 1741, Clockmaker and geophysicist, George Graham witnessed the aurora in London and made the connection between the lights and geomagnetic activity which he was able to measure with his almost friction free compass needle that he had invented in 1701.

He noted ‘Who could have thought it? That a compass needle could have sympathy and a connection with the aurora!’.

The 1859 Carrington Event was the strongest recorded geomagnetic storm in history, caused by an unusually strong solar flare. The simultaneous observation of the solar flare by the English astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson and the subsequent geomagnetic disturbance led scientists to realize the Sun could directly affect Earth’s magnetic field, a pivotal moment in the study of space weather. 

On 7/8th March 1918 the UK skies were lit up to devastating effect as the auroral light reflected along the path of the river Thames giving German bombers a map to the otherwise darkened city of London.

With the advent of the digital camera aurora recording has become ubiquitous across social media. It appears the phone camera can ‘see’ a much brighter and more vibrant effect than the human eye. This is because it can take at least 30 minutes for the human eye to become fully adapted to the dark and sensitive enough to compete with the camera. Looking at the phone will also negate any sensitivity of the eye. Human night vision has evolved to be in black and white, the cones that create colour do not fire unless the light is very bright and so the aurora is often experienced as white pillars without the greens and reds we see on the camera.

The European Space Agency has simulated a solar storm on the scale of the Carrington Event, the most powerful in recorded history. The simulation shows that in minutes, communications were disrupted and in hours, satellites destabilized. There’s no way to stop it, but early warning systems and space weather monitoring could help us prepare.

Scientists Warn: A Solar Superstorm Could Hit Earth Any Day

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never still

November 3, 2025 //
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The finale of the exhibition programme of Carbon, Carbon Everywhere co-curated by Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek and Maria Hinel at Hypha HQ included an exhibition tour, a BREAT(HOLD) workshop led by Ania Mokrzycka and an invitation to view cosmic particle trails passing through a cloud chamber.

This simple equipment of a plastic tank saturated with isopropyl alcohol vapour over a metal tray sitting on dry ice was used to capture footage for the video Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe showing in the exhibition. Cosmic rays are fast-moving particles, blasted across space, spiralling along magnetic field lines to end up entangled with carbon in our bodies.

Installation image of Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe

Not only is all life physically permeated by cosmic rays with the potential for nuclei collisions but some cascading particles smash into atoms of nitrogen to create carbon-14 which combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to create radioactive carbon-dioxide which enters the food cycle via photosynthesis.  Cosmic ray activity creating Carbon-14 allows us to perform carbon dating techniques offering insights into Earth’s past climate, magnetic field, solar activity, and changes in the carbon cycle, helping to understand historical patterns and establish timelines for ancient human history.

The title of the exhibition, Carbon, Carbon Everywhere, is a quote from the landmark essay Carbon by the writer and chemist Primo Levi. In the essay, Levi traces a journey of a single atom of carbon across distinct states and beings, from the monotony of being embedded in limestone for hundreds of millions of years, to entering the world of ‘things that change’ – swiftly shifting from the atmosphere to the lungs of a falcon, to the sea, to the trunk of a cedar, and eventually entering the writer’s own body from a glass of milk on his desk, crossing into the brain cell that controls the hand writing its own story. Resolutely specific yet universal, Levi’s story highlights the singularity of carbon as an element that inherently connects all things through its relentless transformation. It fossilises, mutates, preserves, pollutes and nourishes. From its ancient geological formations to its current atmospheric volatility, carbon is never still, shifting between forms and contexts in an ongoing process of exchange.

‘It is possible to demonstrate that this completely arbitrary story is true. I could tell innumerable other stories, and they would all be true: literally true, in the nature of the transitions, in their order and data. The number of atoms is so great that one could always be found whose story coincides with any capriciously invented story’ Primo Levi

This was a beautiful show and I was thrilled to be invited to exhibit alongside such amazing artists including Emii Alrai, Anousha Payne, Kate Daudy, Konstantin Novoselov, Ania Mokrzycka, Nissa Nishikawa, Mariele Neudecker, Simon Faithfull, Aimee Parrott, Lucia Pizzani, Lizi Sanchez and Meng Zhou.

I am very excited to have an invitation to exhibit at the Safehouses in Peckham next year with a group of wonderful artists and friends. Curated by Julie Hoyle, the artists have been selected for the way their work resonates with the atmosphere of the Safehouses — places where traces of the past meet the imagined and the unseen. Together, the works will form a dialogue between beauty and unease, the real and the imagined, reanimating the stripped-bare rooms with strange company. We had a productive site visit and I have two spaces in mind to work with – one above and one below.

There is an ongoing refurbishment project at my studio complex which although welcome improvements has caused a little disruption to my ability to work there recently. My unit has had a new roof installed and each studio is being insulated with a new ceiling and opening Velux window. When the new roof went on we lost our ceiling windows so it is wonderful to have natural light from above again. Having to move everything out of my studio for a couple of weeks has been a good exercise in discovering long hidden materials and putting it all back has forced my hand to have a bit of a clear out of items I am unlikely to use and pass these on to other studio holders. Images show before, during and after.

I managed to get everything back into my studio just in time for a studio visit from curator Catherine Li to discuss the possibility of exhibiting at Brompton Cemetery Chapel next year. It is a stunning building so I am very excited about this upcoming project.

I have been experimenting with an old wooden slide viewer, printing images onto acetate from my microscope camera of polarised crystal and rock structures.

Work in progress on The Book of Reversals, writing text to print over the screen-printed magnetic graph lines. Ocean floor magnetic stripes are formed as magma cools at mid-ocean ridges. These alternating bands show Earth’s magnetic field reversals, with minerals in the crust aligning to current polarity and recording each change in pattern.

Colossal forces spinning dust

Aeons of accretion and gravity / shaping the debris of destruction

Searing elements separate /  amidst violence and decay

The weighty fall, pulled down, digested / feeling pressure only diamonds can survive

Work in progress looking at the sacred geometry of the Westminster Abbey Cosmati Pavement and relating medieval symbolism with contemporary iconography to think about changing relationships to fire, water, earth, air and the cosmos. Reimagining imagery from the Cosmati Pavement and particle accelerator at CERN.

Out and About

Noémie Goudal And yet it still moves at Edel Assanti. Mesmerizing work. I especially found the work Rocks very effective, an inkjet print on photographic paper with a video projection that moves across the image highlighting certain parts as though a torch is traversing a dark landscape. I always enjoy the theatricality of her large scale video installations even if they do purport a world collapsing around us.

Gorgeous paintings by Helen Baines in Striding Edge at The Department Store, Brixton. Photos don’t capture the ethereal luminosity.

The hypnotic monument of modified LED laptop screens Wiped (Free Palastine) by Katrin Hanusch in Return of the Repressed curated by Toby Ziegler at an empty office block 10 Heddon Street. A show examining alienation and abstraction of the human experience in a climate of digital technology and AI.

The magnificent Babel by Cildo Meireles at Tate Modern. With slightly dalek vibes, this thrumming ‘tower of incomprehension’ relates to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, a tower tall enough to reach the heavens. God was offended by this structure, and caused the builders to speak in different languages. No longer able to understand one another, they became divided and scattered across the earth, and so began all mankind’s conflicts. Here we are, punished for our curiosity, again. This work though is a joy.

Material Actors curated by binder of women at Hypha Gallery 3 / No. 1 Poultry, London explores the tipping point of formal representation into the theatrical and cinematic world of mimicry and artifice. The artists include Alice Browne, Charlie Franklin, Lauren Godfrey, Oona Grimes, Pia Pack, Milly Peck, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Laura White. Material process and the façade are key in many of the works that surprise and confound definition.

Quantum Storytelling and the Cosmic Oval – a fascinating discussion exploring how cosmic discoveries influence cultural narratives and the composing of histories. Physicist and author Janna Levin in conversation with writer Ella Finer to celebrate the launch of a new book commission The Cosmic Oval. Chaired by Lily Jencks, Keeper of Vision at The Cosmic House, with further insight from Tony Milligan, Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Ethics, Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London.

Quantum Untangled at The Science Gallery, London. I liked the simplicity of Alistair McClymont’s An Early Universe where wave patterns caused in water by low frequency sound vibrations are projected via a lens to reference quantum oscillations created when the universe was rapidly expanding after the big bang. Two large installations from Conrad Shawcross use the play of shadows to signify intangible forces of the universe. In Ringdown two caged spherical pendulums oscillate in violent motion to evoke the spiralling motion of gravitational waves in the moments after two black holes merge, a phase known as ‘ringdown.’ The artwork is probed with sensors to trace the magnetic field generated, which is displayed on a monitor. The Blind Proliferation explores the idea that our Universe is one of many co-existing ‘bubble universes’ formed in the period of rapid expansion at the beginning of time. Two ‘scientist’s offices sit either side of a structure casting complex shadows. In a nod to Plato, the scientists can only see the shadows from which they must determine their origin. There are slight differences between the two offices to suggest the idea of the multiverse where many worlds may exist with only slight variations. Daniela Brill Estrada & Monica C. LoCascio, Begriff des Körpers reflect on the nature of perception and shared understanding through their use of copper, a key material in quantum technologies, to create sculptures that describe the diagrammatic language of scientists when explaining spacetime and quantum phenomena.

It is always exciting to enter a truly dark space – NOWISWHENWEARE (The Stars) at the Rambert Dance Studios as part of the LFF Expanded program promised a breath-taking journey through light and sound when you would enter a meditative state and come face to face with your inner self. With nearly 4,000 reactive LED lights and a 496-channel soundscape it was an enjoyable experience but perhaps not quite as awe inspiring as hoped.

(S)low Tech AI by Studio Above & Below (Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden) at Victoria and Albert Museum. ‘This installation examines artificial intelligence through the lens of geology. A sculptural interface of four rocks activates a slow, responsive AI system that reacts to touch with evolving sound and image. Each new rock arrangement adds a line to a growing digital landscape, echoing sedimentary layers shaped by collective interaction. The imagery is drawn from four geologically significant sites in Scotland, where ancient stone carvings show early examples of symbolic data recording. Using simple algorithms, the work invites reflection on AI as a slow, ethical, and materially-aware process.’ I couldn’t determine what changes were set in motion when the stones were moved, it does say it is a slow process so perhaps I shouldn’t have expected to notice the impact of my moving the stones and it is something that builds into the algorithm later. It was still quite mesmerising to watch.

Luca Bosani Unidentified Performing Objects at Victoria and Albert Museum

Loved these boots that look like they have been torn from the rock. Magnes might have felt a slight tug as the nails in his boots clung to the magnetite beneath his feet but imagine the weight, the feeling of increased gravity walking in boots of rock.

The Ripple Effect by Alicja Patanowski blending materials from one of the largest mining waste reservoirs in Europe with clay to create a tiled seating installation in the John Madejski Garden.

Screening as part of the London Film Festival, John Lilly and The Earth Coincidence Control Office directed by Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens, explores Lilly’s radical experiments with isolation tanks and LSD to study consciousness, as well as his theory that a hidden entity called the Earth Coincidence Control Office (E.C.C.O.) secretly influences human events. Despite his desire to communicate with cetaceans believing them to be intelligent conscious beings he exhibits a cold disconnect to their physical and emotional welfare. A lot of the footage is shocking to a contemporary audience in its cruelty but his research into human consciousness was trailblazing at the time and his conclusion that humans were at risk from an outside technology based intelligence does have some prescience considering current concerns over AI.

Artists First: Contemporary perspectives on portraiture at The National Portrait Gallery commissioned several artists to respond to an artwork of their choice. Charmaine Watkiss chose the portrait of Sir Hans Sloane, a botanist and collector who travelled to Jamaica in 1687 taking advantage of enslaved people’s indigenous knowledge of the location, properties and medicinal uses of local plants to boost his collection and furnish his publication. Charmaine’s beautifully crafted response To reimagine an African Queen shifts the dynamic to reflect the dissonance between these two human’s relationship to nature, one built on wisdom and respect and one which based on extraction and mastery.

Reading

The Stone Woman by A.S. Byatt. An evocative journey into becoming other.

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