Delighted that my etching Forest of Eden has been selected for exhibition at AIR Gallery on the theme of the macabre with the exhibition renamed Memento Mori. What happens when we are confronted with the uncomfortable or visually grotesque? What makes the unappealing difficult to digest but impossible to turn away from?
The myth of the wild man stretches back to the tale of Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality. In history the wild man’s characteristics oscillate between horror and fantasy. They reflect fear of the other as well as aspirations to be at one with nature often violating the taboos of civilization and symbolizing the repressed desires of society. This person who posts photos of himself in charged poses has become an internet meme shared with equal disgust and fascination. In this etching he is placed back in the ancient forest of all our origins.
I have completed the video commission Cosmic Chiasmus (crossing the universe) for Queen’s Hall Digital but am continuing research into cosmic rays. Around 10,000 muons rain down on each square metre of Earth’s surface every minute.
Muon tomography can be used to remotely explore dense matter for hidden voids. High energy cosmic rays such as muons pass through objects, but in doing so, some will be absorbed by the object and so fewer particles will arrive on the other side. This means sensitive muon detectors can be used like x-rays to determine the structure of extremely large and dense objects. This method has been used to reveal a mysterious, 30-metre-long hidden chamber in the 4,500-year-old great pyramid of Giza, to determine the inner structures of volcanoes and to study the damaged nuclear reactor at Fukushima, Japan.
The Robot, The Dentist and The Pyramid is a 45-minute Documentary (2020) from Ancient Architects
I have discovered an audio manipulation in Adobe Audition that makes my own voice acceptable to me as voiceover for my video work. So I have returned to the video Contingent Horizons, rewritten and recorded new dialogue.
This dialogue is based on the excerpts from popular online lectures that I had used before but I have reimagined some of these quotes and included ideas from ancient descriptions of the cosmos.
the nature of the world emerges from shifting patterns
between matter and myth
to the darkest North with moon on water
to the South with sunlit crystal
to the West with Earthbound cubic alter
to the East with circling zephyrs
walking
to know the land as a plotted dimension
as abstract space
as imagined space
Out of the studio:
Lisa Chang Lee Symphony Zero at San Mei Gallery. Beautiful work creating a fragile connection between humans and the natural world as rhythms coincide to create collaborative music. Plants swaying in the breeze are each represented by a musical instrument sympathetic to its form and its movement is transposed using algorithms applied using modes of symmetry and interval into musical scores which in turn are played by humans.
Less a building: Interactions with the London Zoo Aviary book launch hosted by Passengers at The Brunswick Centre. Transported by readings from the book of this iconic flight of fancy in architecture for avian captives at the zoo. A many layered and collaborative research project by Michaela Nettell with Marcela Araguez, Tim Dee, Polly Gould, Alex Hartley, Julie F Hill, Helen Jukes, Milena Michalski, Colin Priest, Ana Ruepp and Matthew Turner. Excellent writing and gorgeous artworks. Now I wish I’d visited the aviary more often.
Geographies of Print collective Without Horizon, Without Shore. Stunning installations set against the civic backdrop of the Old Lambeth County Court, an apt setting for work looking at passage of time, capturing the transient and the human condition.
Victoria Arney has used the sonograms of bird song to create sculptural woodcuts. Capturing fleeting moments within landscape.
Victoria Ahrens looks at erosion and disappearance, creating work in situ using the minerals present in the landscape to hand colour her prints. We think of colour as light bouncing off matter, some absorbed, some reflected, but this work really brings home how integral colour is to substance.
Carol Wyss uncovers the structures that shape us physically and bear witness human frailty.
Symbols made from bones connect us to the earth as origin and destiny.
Thom Bridge Only Similar or Equivalent at Best solo show at Staffordshire Street Studios. Incredible work with light taking the image into realms of physics and geology.
“The degree to which an image is like the world is a question not of fidelity- as a narrative of documentation or technological development would have it – but of equivalence, the role that an image plays in showing in showing, or demonstrating, representing or bringing into view. Equivalence takes priority over resemblance, because the task of the image is not to repeat the world, but to inform it, and by informing it, subtly alter it in turn.” Duncan Wooldridge
Chudamani Clowes in Figure It Out with the Neulinge Collective. Wonderful immediacy as always from Chud that cuts right through to expose the lived experience of those who migrate. Epic journeys bring stories and transformation. The coral is on the move.
Robert Good in Osmosis: experiments in permeability at Espacio Gallery with work that forces an examination of an addiction to media updates, digital clickbait and daily data news dumps. Assaulted by a tsunami of inane questions and disconnected headlines into a brain numbing torpor the need for space to think is made apparent.
A captivating telling of how magic is vital for our well being and should be sought not shunned. Mythosphere is a multi-media theatre production created by Inna Dulerayn presented by Bacchae productions in partnership with Stone Nest at the atmospherically derelict Old Welsh Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue. Inspired by the life experiences and creativity of Leonora Carrington and the writings of Diana Wynne.
This is a story about magic. The magic that we lost. The magic that is a forgotten part of our nature. The magic that is our right to be divine. But we still sense it. We dream of it. We feel abandoned without it. We keep looking for it all our lives.
Reading:
I am still dipping into The Waves by Virginia Woolf which I was inspired to read after listening to the Art Fictions Podcast with guest artist Hannah Hughes speaking to Fiona Fullerton. I particularly love the interludes as the sun rises over the ocean and begins its journey across the sky. Like too rich chocolate cake the intensity of Woolf’s writing is delicious but can only be taken in small bites.
I have Chantall Powell to thank for flagging up the book The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination by Patrick Harpur. A fascinating book taking the view that just because something is not literally so doesn’t mean it isn’t ‘real’. As in Mythosphere the book seeks to rediscover the Otherworld of spirits, gods and daimons which the west has banished to the unconscious mind.
I was so excited to read the following:
“…daimons inhabit another, often subterranean world which fleetingly interacts with ours. They are both material and immaterial, both there and not-there – often small, always elusive shape-shifters whose world is characterized by distortions of time and space and, above all, by an intrinsic uncertainty.
The point is: the words ‘subatomic particles’ could be substituted for ‘daimons’ in the paragraph above without any loss of accuracy. This is not a coincidence – the subatomic realm, like the unconscious, is where the daimons took refuge once they were outcast from their natural habitat.”
He looks weary.
Akeley was also a pioneering taxidermist and creator of natural history dioramas, he also devised a motion picture camera to take on location. In his presentation 
He made many expeditions to Africa to collect his own specimens, make drawings and take photographs so he could transpose the African plains to urban New York. He was of course presenting an idealised view to the awestruck New Yorkers adding to the distorted representation of faraway lands much like the holiday postcard photograph.
Susan Eyre 