Archives for posts with tag: Charly Blackburn

Secrets

October 6, 2026 //

Honoured to be invited to contribute a postcard for the RWA secret auction which offers the unique chance to purchase original, large postcard-sized works of art by leading figures from the art world. The exhibition Cosmos: the art of observing space which ran at the RWA earlier this year will soon be traveling to Aberdeen Art Gallery. My works Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge), 92 Years Measured in Light and Sun Factor will join the tour.

I have created a digital iteration of the Book of Reversals. Using the scanned images made during my HiResidency at Equivalentbehaviour and a recorded dialogue of the text over the gentle sounds of the sea. The Book of Reversals offers a poetic overview of the formation of planet Earth and its turbulent fluid core that generates an unpredictable but protective magnetic field prone to sudden changes in polarity. Graph readings from magnetometers stationed around the British Isles, which record variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, are screen printed in vertical stripes, either side of the book’s spine, emulating the geological phenomena of magnetic stripes found on the ocean floor. These symmetrical bands, found at mid-ocean ridges, are created as magma rises, cools, and forms new oceanic crust whose magnetic minerals align with Earth’s prevailing magnetic field.

The narrative reflects on the complex dynamics of Earth’s history of polarity reversals, periods of weakened magnetic field, ceaseless interactions between the inner core, the outer core, the mantle and the crust and how its secrets may be discovered.

I am pursuing ideas put forward in my longlisted Artangel proposal to commemorate the pioneering cosmic ray science that took place at during the Haverah Park experiment. This was once home to one of the largest extensive cosmic ray air shower arrays in the world, studying the highest-energy cosmic-rays, until it closed in the late 1980’s. My proposal stated that any sculpture or intervention made where the remains of the huts stand, should take current land use into account.

Having visited the detector huts abandoned across the North Yorkshire moors and seen that sheep are kept on the land here, I have been thinking about how the sheep might experience the night sky.

I had an idea to create a star gazing platform for the sheep, however from just a small amount of research I discovered that there is a fatal illness in sheep which farmers refer to as ‘stargazing’ due to the unnatural position of the sheep’s head looking up. Also, sheep have evolved eyes where the pupil automatically remains horizontal to the ground so that they can spot predators approaching even when they are feeding with their heads down. It seems they might not look skywards unless they are afflicted by a terrible brain disease. Despite this unfortunate discovery, it has been interesting to discover how sheep interact with the world.

Although popular culture often portrays sheep as unintelligent, scientific evidence shows they can form complex social relationships within their flocks and have an extremely good learning ability and memory. Their vision is quite different from ours as they have monocular vision with horizontal, rectangular pupils, giving an impressive panoramic visual field. However with blind spots front and rear, and poor depth perception they can be easily spooked. Although they can see well in low light they are unable to gain sharp focus on distant objects, so even under the dark skies of the moors they might not see the stars clearly if they could look up.

Their vision might be compromised in some instances but it is possible sheep may be sensitive to Earth’s magnetic field. Research has shown that on days when the weather is not so likely to influence how they align their bodies, they appear to show a preferred north-east–south-west alignment which could mean they use magnetoreception for orientation. Similar tendencies have also been observed in cattle, deer, and other mammals.

For work connected to this project I have been doing some preliminary experiments with thread and cardboard boxes. I made some small cardboard models in the shape of the huts but have moved on to thinking of representing the water tanks which were used to record the shower particles as they arrive in a thin disc like structure, sweeping through the atmosphere at nearly the velocity of light. My current thinking is that a series of ‘tanks’ will be wall based with thread woven across the inside marking out the shapes of constellations, potential origins of cosmic rays. The inside of the ‘tanks’ will be lined with rich blue cyanotypes – images made with starlight (the sun). The blue echoes the colour of the scintillating light of Cherenkov radiation which emits photons with short wavelengths and high frequencies, which the human eye sees as blue and violet.

Other ideas in progress include a reinterpretation of the Cosmati Pavement of Westminster Abbey. The mosaic is full of medieval symbolism and sacred geometry and number systems. I am looking to relate ancient symbolism and contemporary iconography to think about changing relationships to fire, water, earth, air and the cosmos. Plato imagined the universe was created as a living creature in the shape of a sphere, perfect and complete in itself. Patterns of Thought author Richard Foster suggests that ‘as our minds become progressively tuned to ecological and global concerns, so the Platonic image of the world as a living creature is re-awakened from its sleep.’

Galleries and other visits

Really enjoyed Annabel Elgar Birds Fly Low at HAPAX Living Room. A speculative reconstruction of a secretive life stemming from finding a pamphlet of instructions for making a spy balloon tucked inside a box of sewing items bought at an online auction. Photographs, keepsakes and other items in the box including a prescription for Thorazine, first administered in the 1950s to treat anxiety, psychosis and agoraphobia, provide intriguing but evasive clues to the owner known only as K.V.M. Faded receipts from a store in Cromarty, Scotland led Annabel to an airfield at Evanton, a launch site for Project Genetrix, a 1950s US programme gathering Cold War intelligence. Surveillance balloons, disguised as weather devices, flew over China, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, with over one hundred launched from Evanton in 1956. The installation at HAPAX includes atmospheric analogue photographs of the items alongside historic photos from the cold war era of the tangled and smashed remains of the ‘spy’ balloons found by the Russians. The pamphlet is sealed away into a frame, not disclosing any of its secrets to the viewer.

A trip to Jena (J in the alphabet odyssey).

“You are simply heavenly/paradisiacal” is a declaration of love to the city of Jena, playing on the name of the nearby popular park called “Paradies” (Paradise). The name stretches back to the Middle Ages. The area along the eastern bank of the Saale River was home to a monastery orchard and lush, idyllic water meadows. Because of its beautiful, fertile green landscape, the locals began referring to this specific stretch of land as “Das Paradies” (The Paradise).

Often called the “City of Light,” Jena in Germany is the home of the world’s oldest operating planetarium and the legacy of optical pioneer Carl Zeiss. Disappointingly, The German Optical Museum (DOM) which holds optical instruments from eight centuries in its globally unique collections, is closed for refurbishment until 2028. The Planetarium, however, has recently reopened after refurbishment, in time to celebrate its centenary. Due to the many train delays in Germany (I was surprised to find the service is constantly delayed) we missed the English version of the planetarium show which is presented just once a week, so ended up seeing the rock and pop space tour which takes you from our solar system to our galaxy, onwards to the wider universe and zooms back in again to find our tiny dot amidst the infinite vastness. The building is very beautiful.

Visited The Goethe Laboratory which is in the former chambers of Jena Botanical Garden’s inspector’s house. It is dedicated to Goethe’s work as a natural scientist, his interests in botany, geology, colour theory and morphology. Between 1775 and 1830 Goethe visited Jena many times, actively involved with the University, establishing museums and collections and working on his experiments in colour theory. Goethe collected and was fascinated by fossils, noticing similarities in the development of bones across species. Through his careful analysis, he succeeded in the (re)discovery of the intermaxillary bone in humans. He had a passion for the deep time of geology and collected lava rocks from Vesuvius and Etna, rock crystals from the Alps, along with limestone and many others.

»It is a pleasant task to explore nature and oneself at the same time, to do violence neither to her nor to one’s own spirit, but to bring both into balance with one another through a gentle reciprocal influence.« – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Proverbs in Prose 1.369

Also visited Schiller’s Garden House where the poet Friedrich Schiller lived and wrote in the late18th Century. He was a good friend of Goethe and the garden features an original stone table where, whenever Goethe was in town, they sat here chatting almost every day. Following Schiller’s death, the estate was purchased by the state and Duke Carl August, the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, had an observatory built on the site. Optical engineer, lecturer and physicist, Ernst Abbe became director of this observatory while living in Schiller’s former garden house. A meridian stone was erected in the grounds to serve as a southern marker for telescope alignment and precise time determination.

Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe developed numerous optical instruments. He came up with the mathematical foundation of microscope design and formulated the limit of optical resolution in an imaging device due to diffraction, nowadays also known as the “Abbe limit”.

There was a beautiful and fascinating exhibition Electrum mundi – Amber worlds at The Jena Phyletic Museum, a globally unique institution founded by Ernst Haeckel, dedicated to the history of evolution and the development of life on Earth. There are more than 200 amber deposits worldwide, it is found on all continents except Antarctica. Amber has always been intriguing for its unusual properties. The Greeks named it ḗlektron for its power to attract other materials. Desired as jewellery for its translucence and rare inclusions that hold lifeforms eternally preserved, pure amber is known as Solar Stone for its golden colour and is very valuable.

The presentation of the tiny amber pieces next to a blown up digital image revealing what is held at this scale in these miniature cosmos was very effective. There are three categorizations of tree resin depending on its age which can be determined by carbon dating, chemical analysis and also by any identifiable inclusions. Amber is fully fossilized and hundreds of millions years old, copal is sub-fossilized and a few hundred thousand years old, defaunation resin defines copal from 1760, the beginning of industrialization. The oldest amber found so far was in Illinois and dated to be 320 million years old. The oldest amber with inclusions, a mosquito and two mites, was dated at 230 million years old, a time when all land masses were merged into the giant continent Pangea. Baltic amber has been used in Europe since at least the neolithic period, travelling the amber road into Egypt and Asia.

Thirty-six pieces of unpolished amber were located in Goethe’s mineral collection and have been non-invasively examined with micro-CT scanning. The insects in the inclusions were able to be identified and transformed into 3D computer models.

The demand for amber has put it at the centre of aggressive trade practices, illegal mining and the manufacture of fake inclusions. During the Middle Ages, the rich amber-producing Baltic coastline became known as the amber shelf was was controlled by the Teutonic Knights and turned into a strict state monopoly. At this time, amber was not just decorative but also used as a source of light, being burnt instead of beeswax, it was sought after as a guard against disease and used by the wealthy as gambling tokens. The state legacy of control continued until 1945.

Illegal amber mining is currently causing major environmental damage particularly in Ukraine and Russia, along with social problems caused by violent gang warfare and lack of policing exacerbated by the war. Extraction methods involve pumping water into the land, hoping the amber will float to the surface to be skimmed of, this flooding leaves huge areas of land devasted and unusable.

At a stop in Cologne on the way to Jena, I came across The Friends Rendezvous (Au rendez-vous des amis) painting by Max Ernst, 1922 at the Museum Ludwig. Having recently experienced the 2026 total eclipse of the sun in Greenland, surrounded by icebergs, the painting struck a chord with the background depicting a total eclipse and what looked like icebergs (though these turned out to be representations of the Alps). Ernst’s use of an eclipse in his painting is to signify a portent for change at the advent of the surrealist movement.

Ernst may well have been influenced by recent total solar eclipses that took on great significance as the observations obtained during these eclipses were able to confirm Einstein’s theory of general relativity, that gravity can bend space-time. In 1919 two expeditions set forth to make observations from Brazil, and an island off the west coast of Africa. Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson suffered equipment failure in Brazil but Arthur Eddington, was able to photograph the event giving results consistent with gravitational lensing. In 1922 it was possible to confirm these results when a total solar eclipse travelled the full width of Australia offering a full five minutes of totality and drawing astronomers from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, India and Britain to journey to a remote setting to make their observations.

Also at the Museum Ludwig I found Palianytsia (white bread) 2022 by Zhanna Kadyrova very moving. She collects stones from the rivers of the Carpathian Mountains which resemble Ukranian loaves when sliced. Wheat shapes the landscape and economy of Ukraine. The exhibition text refers to the requisition of wheat by Bolsheviks in the 1930’s which left 4 million people to starve. The work was made the same year as the Russians invaded Ukraine causing a severe drop in wheat production and triggering major disruptions in global grain markets.

Having been looking at various methods of string art I was impressed by Günther Uecker’s nail reliefs from 1968, although no string or thread is involved.

A very entertaining talk at Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, from Mary Branson on her past exploits, including her extraordinary work New Dawn installed in the Houses of Parliament, which celebrates the centenary of the Suffrage movement. There was also the opportunity to view her very touching and personal ‘A Conversation with My Mother’ installed here for the summer season. Inspired by a vibrant dream of having a conversation with her mother while in a boat at a time when her mother was suffering from dementia and was no longer able to speak. The boat, made from hand steamed and bent wooden pallets is lined with copper leaf giving it an unearthly inner glow. The boat is viewed from a bench set between speakers where you hear the garden appropriate poem, ‘Insects’ by John Clare, recited. From one side you hear the voice of Mary, and from the other, the voice of her mother recorded at a time just before the onset of her illness. The recital descends into static, which Mary says describes the loss of communication between them but I thought might represent the electromagnetic spectrum that could be a way of communicating across dimensions.

I love the work by Charly Blackburn showing in Lanthanides: Rare Earth Spectra, a presentation of works developed during her year-long residency at County Hall Pottery. I was lucky to be able to buy a small piece. Her funded research project, Developing Rare Earth Elements in Ceramic Glazing, investigates the use of rare earth elements within ceramics, exploring their magical, luminescent and light-reactive qualities alongside their wider social and technological significance.

Born from supernova explosions, pulled from the ground and purified at processing plants, Lanthanides are found in lenses, computer screens, lighting, fibre optics, corrective eye-surgery lasers, and MRI scanners. They illuminate streets, sharpen our glasses and peer into our bodies. This exhibition materialises these overlooked elements, revealing the otherwise silent conductors of our tech-laden lifestyles. Erbium pink. Praseodymium green. They are named as ‘critical’ and ’strategic’ but collectively, we barely know their elemental names.

These pieces are very alluring, Charly acknowledges that their crystalline beauty can distract from the more serious implications of the extraction, processing and technological reliance or rare earth minerals that she wishes to highlight. We settled on ‘painfully beautiful’ as an apt description.

From The Land at Proposition Studios, Bethnal Green brings together works that examine the relationship between architecture and the living world. Works included Aeolian (sand welding experiments) Aeolian explores wind as an active architectural agent shaping form, motion and environmental transformation. Central to the research was the study of ‘fulgurites’, glass formations created when lightening strikes sand at extreme temperatures. Blade Building a collaborative timber construction. Earthly Planets, a variety of soil samples fashioned into spheres using the Japanese technique of Doro Dango. A series of rich composite images exploring the rise of the technosphere, generated from blending remote sensing, mapping and environmental data to render visible otherwise unseen infrastructures and processes shaping the earth system.

Jaspar Marsalis Still Life at Chisenhale Gallery. Bringing attention to parts of life that no-one can own. Viewing a large cinematic projection is from a steep slope of scaffolding to give the idea of stadium viewing with a safety warning not to touch the electrostatic speakers which are programmed to emit static tones created from the transmission frequencies of the imagery. The random footage of obscure landscapes is hacked from unsecured surveillance cameras that capture and send footage over an IP network rather than through traditional cables. Obsolete forms of surveillance hardware left behind yet still, almost poignantly, performing their original function. Attention is held by a curiosity as to what might appear next, might some extraordinary event be captured and shared.

Gail Dickerson, Beaconsfield EarthAIR 2026, Environmental Artist In Residence exhibition showing research and works in progress and new works made with London Clay and Lambeth Group Sediments. Gail works closely with London Geodiversity Partnership and Museum of London in her exploration of local geologies and London Clay. An incredible amount of work with detailed cataloguing of the soil to reveal the changes at different depths and some great painterly collaborations with the earth.

A visit to Goodwood Art Foundation Sculpture Park to see the fabulous Nancy Holt exhibition MoonSunStarEarthSkyWater. The last time I visited the park was in 2008 when it was the Cass Sculpture Park. A lot has changed. It only reopened 14 months ago and it is still shiny and new. Nancy Holt’s work, as curator Ann Gallagher points out, is all about perceiving. Some of the works in the gallery were made after her visit to the UK in 1969 where she was fascinated by ancient neolithic sites but also the bright orange markings of hiking trails in the lake district.

Nancy Holt’s Hydra’s Head (1974) earthwork, formed of six pools of water positioned according to the Hydra constellation, has its first posthumous installation within the Foundation’s chalk quarry, where the pools reflect the changing skies above.

Also some great pieces by Eva Rothschild.

Rachel Whiteread’s solidification of space looking good set against a living, breathing woodland setting.

A vast magic cube throwing colours about by Hélio Oiticica, Susan Philipsz beautifully layered soundscape that draws you further into the woods and strong pairing of steel and stone by Lee Ufan.

Saw a fantastic production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard at the Duke of York’s Theatre, which explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty. It slices across time to reveal perspectives on nature, fashions in stylised landscape with carefully placed ruins and even a real hermit installed. The search for truth, authenticity and academic renown is ripped apart. Acerbically funny and very clever.

Some passages from my 2014 MA dissertation Finding Paradise –

In his book Forests; the Shadow of Civilization Robert Pogue Harrison brings to our attention the rich history of our relationship with the forest as our first refuge and birthplace of civilization. From the legends and poetry of the past we are saturated in the belief that our origins are in the woods. He quotes from Virgil’s Aeneid

“These woodland places
Once were homes of local fauns and nymphs
Together with a race of men that came
From tree trunks, from hard oak”

Since these ancient beginnings when we first carved out a space in the forest we have always looked back to a time when we believed we lived in harmony with nature. Our shared beliefs took root in Greek mythology where poets told of a Golden Age of men living blissfully on the bounty of the land, a world of innocent sanctity lost to us amid the power struggles of the Titans. Virgil took up the theme of a lost haven of delight locating it in an idealized Arcady transposing pastoral imagery from the lush valleys and meadows of Sicily onto the wild and rocky Greek countryside. The fantasy of Arcadia was born which has inspired the artists and poets we have revered ever since.

The framing of a new perspective where landscape becomes picture was fuelled by sciences whose methodology required exactitude. Through measuring our world we hoped to gain control. First the poetic wisdom of the sage was abandoned, then the erudite scholar was replaced by the incisive research man extolling the objectification of nature. Nature that could be experienced vicariously through painting denied the viewer a visceral encounter and heralded the sublimation of desire for direct contact. The mythologizing of the rural began even before Virgil’s ‘Bucolics’ and continues today “massaged by technological spectacle” in mass entertainments such as ‘Avatar’.

Reading

I have returned to reading The Physics of Angels and am intrigued by Rupert Sheldrake’s theories on the potential consciousness of the sun. Having spent quite a lot of time looking at the sun (through a filter) and watching it being totally eclipsed, I quite like the idea that it is conscious in some incomprehensible way, which would mean all the other stars are as well. A universe filled with cosmic bodies crackling and glimmering with electrical impulses of such complexity that what the sun is experiencing is totally outside what we can understand yet maybe we can acknowledge in some way.

‘If there’s a connection between our consciousness and complex, dynamic electromagnetic patterns in our brains, there’s no reason that I can see for denying the possibility of this connection in other cases and especially on the sun.‘

Tags amber, Annabel Elgar, Arcadia, Charly Blackburn, Cherenkov radiation, Cosmati pavement, Cosmos: the art of observing space, Equivalentbehaviour, Ernst Abbe, Eva Rothschild, Gail Dickerson, Günther Uecker, Goethe, Goodwood Art Foundation, Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, HAPAX Living Room, Haverah Park, Jena, Large Hadron Collider, magnetic field reversal, Mary Branson, Max Ernst, Museum Ludwig, Nancy Holt, Phyletic Museum, Planetarium, Rachel Whiteread, Rupert Sheldrake, RWA secret auction, Schiller, sheep, Susan Philipsz, The Book of Reversals, total eclipse, total solar eclipse, Zeiss, Zhanna Kadyrova

Categories Uncategorized

correlation

February 9, 2025 //

‘What truth could be more unexpected ….than the one in which the mineral envisions while also being envisioned.’ Jason Groves, The Geological Unconscious

Speculating on a view of the world projected from the perspective of the rock. In the studio drilling more holes for optical lenses set out in a pattern based on the crystal structure of the naturally magnetic mineral magnetite which was determined in 1915 as one of the first crystal structures to be obtained using X-ray diffraction. Found in igneous rocks, sedimentary deposits and sand across the globe in many locations, magnetite is also found in the cells of organisms from bacteria to humans. Magnetite contains both ferrous (divalent) and ferric (trivalent) iron along with oxygen.

Testing projecting through the optical lenses I’m excited to see how the different lenses cause images to overlap and distort.

I received a Digital Microscope for my birthday and a selection of rocks and meteorites to look at. So far I have only used the lens with the least magnification capabilities yet this is revealing wonderful detail in the rocks which are further enhanced by using a polarising filter. I have chosen to look at rocks which originate near areas of tectonic activity or that may have magnetite in them.

Images on left have no filter, those on the right have a polarising filter.

This thin slice of Deep Ocean Pebble was collected in 1979 three miles deep in the Pacific Ocean Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone. This zone is regularly considered for deep-sea mining due to the abundant presence of manganese nodules. In 2016, investigation of the seafloor in the zone was found to contain an abundance and diversity of life – more than half of the species collected were new to science.

This slice of Lewisian Gneiss is 3 billion years old. These ancient rocks from the Isle of Lewis were caught up in a mountain building cycle roughly 490–390 million years ago and were pushed above younger rocks formed during the late stages of this tectonic event.

This slice of Olivine Basalt comes from Þingvallavatn, a rift valley lake in southwestern Iceland. The area is covered by lava. The cracks and faults around the lake is where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet. This may be the only place where one can stand with two feet on two different tectonic plates. The sample is a mid oceanic ridge basalt (MORB) fine grained but consisting of small olivine, clinopyroxene fragments in ground mass dominated by plagioclase laths, an opaque magnetite.

This slice of Vesicular Basalt Lava – a type of lava that solidifies into a rock with trapped gas bubbles leaving small holes as the lava cools, comes from the Mid Atlantic Ridge near the Azores Islands.

I also have a piece of Jepara taken from a pallasite, a class of stony–iron meteorite, discovered in Indonesia in 2008 during building excavations. The outside is heavily weathered but when cut and polished the inside reveals a translucent structure of densely packed olivine and magnetite. The sample has been coated with acrylic which has surface scratches so I think some of the detail has been compromised but it is still beautiful. No filters used here.

I am making use of public access to historical magnetograms recording of Earth’s magnetic declination to feed into new work inspired by palaeomagnetism. Magnetic studies of the ocean in the 1950’s had determined that the ocean floor was covered by bands of magnetic stripes that varied between normal polarity and reversed polarity. The Earth’s magnetic field has reversed polarity many times over the past hundreds of millions of years. These magnetic stripes were found to be symmetrical on the ocean floor about the mid-oceanic ridge. In 1963 British scientists, Fred Vine and D. H. Matthews proposed that the magnetic striping was caused by paleomagnetism, the storing of Earth’s ancient magnetic field in the sedimentary rocks that were forming as lava spewed up and spread across the ocean floor setting the history of pole reversals in stone.

I have embarked on some crystal growing experiments using a seed crystal in a saturated solution of mono-ammonium phosphate and aluminium potassium sulphate. I am hoping these might become objects to view through a lovely old wooden magnifying box I have. The last time I experimented with crystals was when I was amazed by the speed and glut of salt crystals overwhelming the test area. Before that made a time lapse video over 5 days of crystal growth for the installation Time Crystals in Reading Stones at St. Augustine’s Tower 2019. I will be learning more about this as workshops are developed for The Geological Unconscious public engagement programme which will run alongside the exhibition at Hypha HQ Euston this coming spring. Both Julie F Hill and Sophie Mei Birkin work with crystal structures and growth in their own practices and will be leading on the workshops we will run in partnership with a local primary school.

A crystal is like a class of children arranged for drill, but standing at ease, so that while the class as a whole has regularity both in time and space, each individual child is a little fidgety. Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, 1948

Had some studio fun testing the possibilities of magnetic putty for future video ideas. Mesmerising the way it very slowly swallows the magnet.

I began the magical process of making copper ink. Soaking pieces of copper in vinegar and salt, stirring daily and watching the liquid turn a milky turquoise blue. Looking forward to using this to patinate copper but also to paint with on paper.

Experimenting winding a copper wire around an iron nail and connecting the wire to a battery cell. A magnetic field is generated around the nail which stays for a little while after the nail is removed from the coil. I used a 9v battery and large nail– it wasn’t a very strong magnet – a welding stick was better and seemed to retain the magnetic field for longer but in both cases the battery got very hot. I had hoped to maybe develop this idea to magnetise a sculpture threaded with iron. Needs more investigation.

I have been exploring the updated Digital Materials Library at the Institute of Making which led me to the Mindsets website which has some cool magnetic materials for sale. Future experiments upcoming.

Exploring paper weaving patterns with a view to reinventing past works while thinking about ideas of cosmic planes in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, a 1909 text by Max Heindel. This text, setting out a theory of seven Worlds and seven Cosmic Planes, supposes an intermingling of spirit with matter where the intersection of the material and metaphysical world are not one above another in space, but inter-penetrate each with the other.

Astonishing that the preserved remains of the ancient kauri trees of New Zealand, alive over 42,000 years ago, can reveal the time of the last significant magnetic pole excursion within their rings. During what is known as ‘The Laschamps Excursion’, the north and south magnetic poles swapped places for about 500-800 years before swapping back again. During a magnetic pole reversal the magnetic field weakens so many more cosmic particles reach the surface of Earth. This means much more Carbon-14 is produced in the atmosphere and absorbed by plants.

Changes in radiocarbon levels were recorded from four ancient kauri logs found buried in peat swamps which seals them in a chemically balanced environment. Through high precision carbon dating processes at the University of Waikato in New Zealand the scientists discovered the most dramatic time was the lead-up to the reversal, when the poles were migrating across the Earth and our magnetic field practically disappeared, leaving life here very vulnerable to cosmic radiation. It appears, this weakening 42,000 years ago, in combination with a period of low solar magnetic activity – captured in evidence from ice cores, caused damage to the ozone layer and disrupted atmospheric conditions impacting the global climate so that devastating environmental changes took place. The research team links this climate change to extinction events which occurred at the same time, Neanderthals vanishing from Europe, and a proliferation of cave paintings appearing in Europe and Asia as humans find shelter from the turbulent weather and increased electrical storms. They have dubbed this period of excursion ‘The Adams Event’ in honour of Douglas Adams who wrote in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that ‘42’ was the answer to life, the universe, and everything

Tane Mahuta – ‘Father of the Forest’ (Waipoua Kauri Forest)

Studio Visits

Julie F Hill and I have been visiting the other artists participating in the upcoming exhibition The Geological Unconscious at Hypha HQ Euston. We are so happy to be working with Charlie Franklin who considers control, physical experience and memory within the natural landscape, Deborah Tchoudjinoff who considers what the form is through the process of material and visual experimentations, Rona Lee who centres on the politics and aesthetics of Geo-materiality along with the human /more than-human entanglements of contemporary life and Sophie Mei Birkin who investigates the generative potential in the transformation of matter through a variety of material processes such as growing salt crystals and exploring amorphous and decomposing substances.

I have also been lucky to have Charly Blackburn and Victoria Rance visit my studio to chat about our respective work and shared interests. Charly is beginning a period of research into rare earth materials and extractive processes and we share a fascination with things magnetic. Victoria came to chat about our shared interest in the sun but is also interested in magnetic fields and the potential they offer for brain to brain communication.

Gallery Visits

Haegue Yang Leap Year at Hayward Gallery. With colourful works festooned by garlands of bells and strewn with fairy lights this was a perfect show for the festive period. Folklore, surrealism and ritual, collage and costumes combine with the modern domestic/utilitarian in hybrid works that have a playful carnival air.

Thoughtful works beautifully presented Each Place Its Own Mind at Edel Assanti with Mirtha Dermisache | Noémie Goudal | Sky Hopinka | Anna Hulačová | Marguerite Humeau | Bronwyn Katz | Kat Lyons | Yukultji Napangati | Emmanuel Van der Auwera. An ongoing collective reimagining of our relationship with the living world, rooted in revelations from indigenous knowledge, ecological research, literature, science, and artistic experimentation. Each Place Its Own Mind borrows its title from ecologist David Abram’s 1996 book The Spell of the Sensuous, which traces the ways the human mind came to renounce its “sensory bearings” in the natural world, visualising a myriad of “lost” faculties that link the “inner, psychological world and the perceptual terrain that surrounds us.”

IN ATTENDANCE – Paying attention in a fragile world competing for attention in the stunning Fitzrovia Chapel includes work by Etel Adnan, Emmanuel Awuni, Phyllida Barlow, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Gabriella Boyd, Miriam Cahn, Eve Sussman, Rachel Kneenbone, Anj Smith, Paula Rego and Cathy Wilkes. Ultimately the gangly body of a foal on the alter arrests the attention here.

Damian Taylor Things Past at Thames-side Studios Gallery. These paintings hover on the edge of discovery where content and surface are ambiguous but reward study with tantalizing recognizable glimpses.

Events

A little out of my depth at the A&G Highlights Meeting at The Geological Society where some talks were quite specialised, involving graphs and terminology beyond my understanding. I do enjoy hearing clever people talk though, even if I can’t grasp exactly what they are explaining. A fascinating presentation by writer Nilanjan Choudhury on ‘The Square Root of a Sonnet’, his play which explores the fraught personal relationship between the brilliant Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and his mentor, Sir Arthur Eddington of Cambridge University who publicly humiliated him at a Royal Astronomical Society meeting 90 years ago to the day. Guardian Article here

Dr Jessica Irving (Bristol University) gave The Harold Jeffreys Lecture on ‘Hearing planetary hearts: seismology of the cores of Earth and Mars’. An engaging speaker, she led us through the milestones of the last 130 years of theories on what is at the centre of the Earth and the discoveries made using seismology.

Dr Chris Lovell (University of Portsmouth) spoke on his research into ‘Accelerated modelling of the entire observable Universe’. I recognised the dark matter simulations and was fascinated by the different views of a galaxy depending on the band of the light spectrum used to observe it.

I joined a sobering Royal Astronomical Society webinar We Need to Talk About Space Junk presented by Professor Mike Lockwood. Our use of space is increasingly limited and threatened by space junk. The concern is that we are heading towards a runaway effect called the Kessler syndrome, in which the debris from one collision causes many others, to the point where space becomes unusable.

I went to see the fast paced RSC production of Kyoto at Soho Place. Welcome to the Kyoto Conference Centre, 11 December 1997. The nations of the world are in deadlock and 11 hours have passed since the UN’s landmark climate conference should have ended. Time is running out and agreement feels a world away. The greatest obstacle: American oil lobbyist and master strategist, Don Pearlman… Set nearly 20 years ago its depressing how little progress was made and we are currently sliding backwards. Would never have guessed it at the time but now am nostalgic for the politics and positivity of the 90’s.

Time to email your MP to join The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dark Skies. The group’s primary focus is to preserve the night sky within the UK and promote the adoption of dark sky friendly lighting and planning policies. Surprisingly the committee is made up mostly of tories – come on the rest of you!

Go to this link where it is quick and easy to message your MP to act on this important issue.

Watching Chris Packham’s The Wonder of Animals – Foxes A red fox catches its prey using more than pinpoint hearing and an accurate pounce: it also involves alignment to the slope of Earth’s magnetic fields. I contacted Peter Hore FRS, Professor of Chemistry and Magnetoreception expert at Oxford University who was so helpful to me before in explaining how birds ‘see’ the magnetic field to see if he had come across any new research on this. He has pointed me in the direction of other research conducted by the group looking at fox behaviour so this is something I will pursue further.

Listening to What? Seriously?? with special guest Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, about how humans learned to survive in space. Quite a few animals were sent to space before humans including two Russian Steppe tortoises (Testudo horsfieldi), who did a circuit of he moon and returned to Earth – alive but starved. The tortoises were chosen as they have a unique ability in the animal world to resist radiation and their blood may be useful in the treatment of radiation sickness. In recent research a string of amino acids have been extracted from the blood of these tortoises and if you inject those amino acids into other animals they become radiation resistant too.

Listening to The Year in Science 2024 podcast – One of the UK’s first military communication satellites’ Skynet 1a launched in 1969 was abandoned a few years later above Africa. Orbital dynamics should have dragged it out somewhere above India but it has been found wandering above the Americas in a busy area of live satellites and no-one knows why. Space consultants think it must have been commanded to move in the 1970’s but can find no record of this and although research has been undertaken it is still a mystery how this satellite moved. BBC article

There is no mention of a cosmic ray interaction forcing the command, but that would be my theory!

Tags carbon-14, Cathy Wilkes, Charlie Franklin, Charly Blackburn, Chris Lovell, Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone, climate change, contemporary art, copper ink, cosmic rays, crystals, Damian Taylor, dark skies, David Abram, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, digital microscope, environment, Fitzrovia Chapel, geology, Haegue Yang, Helen Sharman, Institute of Making, Jepara, Jessica Irving, Kauri trees, Kyoto, Lava, Lewisian Gneiss, magnetic putty, magnetic stripes, magnetite, magnetograms, magnetoreception, meteorite, Mike Lockwood, Nilanjan Choudhury, Noémie Goudal, Olivine Basalt, optical lenses, paleomagnetism, pallasite, paper weaving, peat swamps, projection, rocks, Rona Lee, satellites, science, seafloor, Sky Hopinka, Sophie Mei Birkin, space junk, studio visit, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, tectonic plates, The Geological Society, The Geological Unconscious, The Laschamps Excursion, Tortoises, Victoria Rance, volcanoes

Categories Uncategorized

objects in motion

June 6, 2024 //

I am excited to be planning a visit to Haverah Park, the site of a cosmic ray air shower detection array consisting of water Cherenkov detectors distributed over an area of 12 km² on the Pennine moorland, North Yorkshire. The experiment was operated by University of Leeds for 20 years, and was switched off in 1987. During its lifetime many 1000’s of extensive air showers were recorded including four exceptional ones of such size that the cosmic rays that generated them must have had energies greater than 10eV. These particles are the highest energy form of radiation known to exist anywhere in the universe and their origin is one of science’s greatest mysteries. Having reimagined The Absolute Hut seen at Hartland Magnetic Observatory for the exhibition A Stone Sky I am hoping a future project may be the reimagining of the huts from Haverah Park.

The exhibition Carbon: under pressure at Science Gallery Bengaluru is still running and I am so proud to have my work Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe included in this amazing show. This video offers a glimpse into a subatomic world where cosmic rays travel from distant galaxies to collide and silently interact with atoms and technology on Earth. Cosmic rays go through a violent process of creation, transformation and decay. From the heart of stars or the depths of black holes these particles power across the universe with unimaginable energy colliding with life on Earth and triggering other processes such as cell mutation, computer data corruption and carbon-14 formation.

I am fascinated to learn more about cosmic magnetism and its influence on the development of early life.

The Universe is magnetic. From stars to galaxies to intergalactic space, magnetic fields thread the cosmos. Yet the origin of cosmic magnetism is still unknown, so astronomers are attempting to make maps of the magnetic fields inside massive galaxy clusters to determine if cosmic magnetism came from the early origin of the universe or developed over time. If it is discovered that there is an alignment of fields across the universe this would point to a primordial source of the cosmic magnetic structure rather than a slow emergence from seed magnetic fields. Understanding the origin of cosmic magnetism may give clues to the development of life on Earth and the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Only planets with a magnetic field have an atmosphere and offer protection from most radioactive cosmic rays.

Those cosmic rays that do penetrate the atmosphere may have influenced the development of early life. Chirality, also known as handedness, is the existence of mirror-image versions of molecules. Like the left and right hand, two chiral forms of a single molecule reflect each other in shape but don’t line up if stacked. All known life-forms show specific chiral properties in chemical structures as well as macroscopic anatomy, development and behaviour. The sugars that make up DNA, for example, are all right-handed. The amino acids that make up proteins are all left-handed. It is not clear how this asymmetry evolved but one theory suggests that magnetic surfaces on minerals in bodies of water on the primordial Earth, charged by the planet’s magnetic field, could have served as “chiral agents” that attracted some forms of molecules more than others, kicking off a process that amplified the chirality of biological molecules.

Another theory proposes that the influence of cosmic rays on early life may explain nature’s preference for a uniform “handedness” among biology’s critical molecules. Before life emerged on Earth, self-replicating molecules were slowly evolving beneath a constant shower of energetic particles from space. Researchers believe that cosmic rays with the ability to penetrate matter were potentially colliding with chiral molecules on Earth and everywhere else in the universe. These tiny differences in the mutation rate would have been most significant when life was beginning and the molecules involved were very simple and more fragile. Under these circumstances, the small but persistent chiral influence from cosmic rays could have, over billions of generations of evolution, produced the single biological handedness we see today.

Chirality is also seen in the spiral of a mollusc shell. I am in the process of finishing the sculpture shell for belly of a rock a hybrid work of chemical conversations at the intersection of the animate and inanimate, inspired by Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics story The Spiral. Paper clay with crushed mussel shells.

My most recent video installation Orbital shown in Life Boat at APT Gallery focused on the potential risks to technology and life on Earth from extreme solar storms.

The following month, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections jettisoning clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields, travelling at speeds up to 3 million mph toward Earth, created the strongest solar storm to reach Earth in two decades, and possibly one of the strongest displays of auroras on record in the past 500 years. There were even perfectly clear skies to view this extraordinary event, yet I missed it. So envious of all those who did get to see the displays of Aurora at such low latitudes. I am hoping there will be another chance to see the Aurora in the UK during this current year of peak solar activity, but not so dramatic a storm as to cause an ‘internet apocalypse’.

Gallery Visits

Andrea V. Wright Eyes of Skin at Thames-side Studios Gallery curated by Thorp Stavri. This exhibition explores the permeability and interactions between the body and architecture and the tensions arising from the ever-changing precariousness of our external and internal constructed environments. It was good to be able to chat with Andrea about her influences from fashion tribes and processes such as casting skins from buildings tumbling into ruins and tactics to avoid being vulnerable working in remote locations.

Holly Birtles and Charly Blackburn in Bog Bodies at APT Gallery. interrogate the complexities of wetland mysteries in the Thames Estuary and the Fenland Marshes exploring life, death, and metamorphosis through ceramics and photography. The Bog preserves the body in death enabling us to travel back in time as far as the Mesolithic period. Conditions inside the bog are acidic. They are perpetually wet, entangled with plants and peat, muddy and monstrous. A dense soup inhabited by complex ecologies that thrive in the anaerobic surroundings, creating a unique biochemical and physical occurrence that facilitates the mummification of prehistoric humans. This exhibition however, confounds expectations of oozing mud and swampy detritus. These ‘artefacts’ are presented in a pristine white cube setting, there maybe a slight whiff of smoke lingering from the ceramics but all is clean and orderly and the framing is thoughtful with a nice use of colour contrasts between image and frame. Good to be surprised.

SALON FOR A SPECULATIVE FUTURE: HOW TO BE IN THE FUTURE? at Vestry St – Cross Lane Projects with works from Aideen Barry, Quilla Constance, Lisa Chang Lee, Kate Fahey, Young In Hong, Evy Jokhova, Huma Mulji, Koushna Navabi, Monika Oechsler, Rebecca Scott, Jo Stockham. Postulating hope for a better future Rebecca Solnit (in an article in the Guardian, 2016): wrote “Hope is an embrace of the unknown”. Living in times of unprecedented change, uncertainty, she says, has “the power to influence the future”. Taking inspiration from the ‘future thinking’ of speculative fiction and looking at a wide range of fields from science and technology to spiritual, ecological and socio-economic issues, the exhibition highlights multiplicities and the complex interplay at work in global dynamics. The works, individually and collectively, draw on associations from different subjectivities and contested /histories facilitating a space for contemplation and the discussion of positive futures. Strong shift shaping work here that gets under the skin, fake facades, hairy hissing and an AI doctored doctrine, make for an unsettling present from which to speculate on the future.

The Tipping Point at Bell House. The tipping point may arrive seemingly out of the blue as a slight change heralding a new way forward. It can be magical or malevolent. More than 40 artists in six individually curated spaces will examine different kinds of tipping points, both minor and major, literal and metaphorical. Sarah Sparkes and Jane Millar curate The Gowan Room using Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel, ‘Parable of the Sower’, as a point of reference. Jonathan Callan, Chudamani Clowes, Sarah Doyle, Lydia Julien, Marq Kearey, David Leapman, Yair Meshoulam, Jane Millar, Stephen Nelson, Victoria Rance, Alke Schmidt, Lex Shute, Ania Tomaszewska-Nelson, Sarah Sparkes, Sara Trillo, Marianne Walker and Alice Wilson explore a new awareness of change and exchange, a constant shifting of strange identities, the malleability of being, interspecies communication and the strength and vulnerability of community. Imagining new ways to merge; ways to intelligently and sensually live in the flux of a perpetual tipping point. Léonie Cronin curates the Lutyens room as a procession through objects of different artistic beliefs, pointing to new myths, a point of Syncretism where ideas become merged and the old symbols get incorporated into new systems.

Thomas Pausz in Haunted Ecologies at Stanley Picker Gallery. A very interesting show drawing threads of local history together with current urgencies such as sewage pollution of the local endangered chalk stream Hogsmill River. From spirit photography and the dark room experiments of Kingston’s Eadweard Muybridge, to digital manipulation, rendering and 3D scanning – Our perception of contemporary environment and culture is always haunted by spectres of the past and by hopes and visions of the future.

Symbiosis II group exhibition exploring the relationship between image makers, the more-than-human, and alternative photographic processes at Four Corners Gallery organised by London Alternative Photography Collective curated by Hayley Harrison, Melanie King, and Ky Lewis. This exhibition considers the connections between symbiosis and alternative photography, and asks if nature is a collaborator or a commodity in alternative photography processes.

YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND at Tate Modern. The main takeaway from this extensive overview of her pioneering work is the sadness that peace hasn’t been given a chance. The works are very direct, may appear simple in content or execution but cut deep into the human psyche. I particularly liked Half a Room, first presented in 1967, this is a room of objects cut in half and painted white. Ono said of this work “Molecules are always at the verge of half disappearing and half emerging…somebody said I should put half a person in the show. But we are halves already.” Another piece, Helmets (pieces of sky) from 2001 invites the audience to take a piece of the sky, which she sees as a hopeful symbol of limitless imagination. Jigsaw pieces of the sky are suspended in German army helmets, and although dispersed, offer the possibility of hope that they can be put back together through collective healing. Many works are participatory. A wall for drawing around your own shadow to create an entanglement of bodies. A boat to add your own wish to an ocean of wishes for the future.

Geographies of Print final iteration of Without Horizon, Without Shore at Thames-side Studios Gallery. Geographies of Print is a collective group created by artists Victoria Ahrens, Carol Wyss and Victoria Arney in 2020. This collective looks to explore and challenge notions of print within wider contemporary discourse and practice. The artists fully inhabit the given space with dramatic large scale pieces, that interact and collaborate to create an exciting and cohesive exhibition. Blocks of colour flash between a maze of hanging muslin panels where etchings of impenetrable blacks and misleading undulations recall both mountain paths and the shadowy mazes of ancient cities. Emotive live music improvisation by Jim Howard (trumpet and electronics) and Julie Walkington (bass) accompanied Victoria Arney’s film reflecting on the epic journey of migrating birds. Landscapes of the mind and the body, a birds eye view and the internal geology of the Earth are beautifully explored.