Lizard Point Residency Exhibition travelled from the rambling halls of The Museum of Cornish Life in Helston to the subterranean curves of Lumen Studios Crypt at St. John on Bethnal Green London. A squeeze for eighteen artists but helped by the crossovers in work created responding to the communication heritage and dark skies of the Cornish Coast experienced during the early spring residency.
My contribution to this exhibition At a distance (click for video link)
Solitary figures using semaphore flags sign ‘We Are One’ out across the ocean; filmed on 29th March 2019 (the first date the UK was supposed to leave the EU).
As in entanglement theory where two paired electrons mirror each other at a distance it is hoped the message will be echoed back.
The work looks at methods of communication across space. It relates this to the mysterious twinning of electrons in quantum entanglement where particles link in a way that they instantly affect each other, even over vast distances, and which Einstein famously called ‘spooky action at a distance’. The resulting video is back projected onto a Fresnel lens, the type found in lighthouses to increase luminosity of the lamps beam, another form of messaging over distance.
The semaphore sequences interplay with mirrored imagery of the lizard lighthouse lamp as it powers up gaining brilliance as darkness falls.
Astro-archaeologist Carolyn Kennet gave a very interesting talk at the exhibition private view. We often think about how long it takes light to travel from the stars to us but as she pointed out, this year sees the 400 year anniversary of Lizard Lighthouse and if you were looking back towards Earth from the Pleiades which are around 400 lightyears away you would just be seeing the photons of light arriving from the lighthouse as the first fires were lit to guide the ships navigating the treacherous rocky seas.
A short video documenting Continuum has been released by Allenheads Contemporary Arts. An inspiring season of art, science and speculative fiction ending in a midsummer’s weekend of extraordinary events.
Out of Studio…
Other Spaces at 180 The Strand
Light and Sound Installations from London-based United Visual Artists founded by Matt Clark who integrate new technologies with traditional media such as painting, sculpture, performance, and site-specific installation.
Vanishing Point is inspired by Renaissance drawings by Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo Da Vinci and Albrecht Durer.
The Great Animal Orchestra – a soundscape of animal recordings, captured in their natural habitats around the world by sound ecologist Bernie Krause visualised by UVA into abstract spectrogram landscapes of the environments where the animals live.
ERRATA (Extreme Remote Rural Artist Travel Agency) Gaada hosted by Creekside Artists for Artlicks Weekend 2019.
Ever wished to leave the city for a far away place + a new island life? Shetland artist-led initiative Gaada critically explore the barriers and benefits of contemporary art practice in extreme, remote, rural contexts. What does an art ecology look like without buyers / galleries / studios / making facilities / public transport links ?
London visitors were invited to answer questions posed by the artists and consider how an art practice might be sustained outside of the city.
Emerging Cosmic Landscapes Symposium at University College London.
An event exploring the benefits of art/science relationships at the culmination of Lisa Pettibone’s year-long residency at Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL) along with collaborator Dr Tom Kitching, science lead on MSSL’s Euclid Mission and Ben Murray (Kings College London and co-director of Phenotypica). What came across was the shared benefit of cross discipline collaboration. The artist enjoying access to question the motivations of the scientists and observe their operations while opening up a more sensory approach for the scientists to engage with materials and use hands on ‘play’ to explore ideas.
‘The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained’ David Bohm
The Star Survey Workshop at Guest Projects created by Niccolò Moronato.
‘We base our knowledge of the universe on science and scientific exactitude, but at the same time, we can’t help but use exotic drawings in the sky to orient our searching and predict future events. So what would happen if we moved to an entirely new context?’
Through a scientific collaboration with Chicago’s Adler Planetarium Niccolò Moronato was able to obtain the first photographic view of the sky from Trappist-1, a ‘twin’ planet of Earth located 40 light years away and make an attempt to become familiar with the new sky.
In the workshop we were invited to draw upon random patterns taken from the Trappist sky. Our interpretations were then looked at by the group to tell a story from the collective imagination which would become the mythology of this alien constellation.
Artist Workshops at The Bomb Factory with Kate Fahey and curator Séamus McCormack as part of ‘Scaffold’
We were invited to bring along an object / text / image, which has been key in the development of a recent work or has been sitting in the studio and is in someway relevant to a project you are working on or your wider artistic practice. We each wrote our thoughts about one of the items brought and then discussed our responses as a group. This led to wider conversations about work methods and outcomes which helped analyse the process of creating to give us shared insights into the creative process. This was followed by a discussion on support structures an artist relies on and a closer look at how an artists time and energy is divided between creativity and practice maintenance such as social media, open calls, galleries and finance.
The exhibition Scaffold looks at the structures we may encounter in our daily and digital lives and the anxiety we feel when those structures break down. Situations are posed of an overload of information, loss of a wi-fi signal, loss of memory, incomprehensible data, the inability to access information. The fallibility of how information is stored and communicated whether in the mind, on a data stick, a book, in radio waves, remotely via drone and digital signals is considered. The overall effect leaves the viewer on unstable ground looking for that scaffolding to hold onto to, a return to the body and the physically known.
Kate Fahey’s practice explores embodied experiences with contemporary screen-based, techno-scientific images, reimagining bodily presence in the military’s highly mediated representation of warfare online. Adam Gibney’s works highlight the relationship between scientific uncertainties and the anxious state we sometimes occupy. Jonathan Mayhew is interested in moments when edges blur and ideas of ourselves along with the world around us are ruptured.
I am delighted to be part of this new interdisciplinary programme of contemporary art which aims to connect the arts and sciences via the conduit of speculative literature and science fiction.
Susan Eyre 