gallery | Susan Eyre

Carbon, Carbon Everywhere opened at Hypha HQ co-curated by Maria Hinel & Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek with exhibiting artists Emii Alrai, Kate Daudy, Konstantin Novoselov, Susan Eyre, Ania Mokrzycka, Simon Faithfull, Nissa Nishikawa, Mariele Neudecker, Anousha Payne, Aimée Parrott, Lucia Pizzani, Lizi Sanchez, Meng Zhou.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the chapter Carbon in the book The Periodic Table by the writer and chemist Primo Levi. Levi traces a journey of a single atom of carbon across distinct states and beings, from resting in a bed of 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. 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.

I am very happy to be exhibiting my video Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe alongside the work of the other amazing artists.

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. Carbon-14 enters the food cycle via photosynthesis as plants absorb it from the atmosphere. It is constantly renewed in all living organisms. On death, the amount of carbon-14 in the tissues begins to decay at a known rate which can be measured to determine the time of death. Cosmic ray activity therefore allows us to perform carbon dating techniques offering insights into Earth’s past climate and magnetic field, solar activity, and changes in the carbon cycle, helping us to understand historical patterns and establish timelines for ancient human history. Understanding the past can help us plan for the future.

Installation shot: Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe 2021, video 05:25 min

Gallery Visits

I loved the textures of the sandy cementy surface of the mixed media painting by Antoni Tàpies in Point and Counterpoint at Centro Botin, Santander.

ENREDOS (entanglements) II at Centro Botin, Santander. Nuno da Luz amplifies the frequencies of the waves and the winds felt in the Bay of Santander, interweaving them with their oscillations of the building itself. The sound installations generate shared listening spaces, converting the environmental data of the Santander coast into vibrations and amplifying the building’s own vibrations, extending and intensifying their intrinsic energies.

The exhibition also includes works by Javier Arce: a series of oil paintings titled On What is Nearby and the sculpture Cambium – cast from the last ring of a tree stump – this is the most recent ring under the bark where new wood cells are formed as the tree grows.

Katinka Bock: A striking installation Feuilles de temperatures which incorporates weather patinated copper sheets rescued from the dome of Anzeiger-Hochhaus in Hannover a legendary site of editorial histories, alongside Some and any, fleeting, an installation of large digital prints set with tiny bronze, ceramic and copper sculptures.

The video Core, a collaboration between sculptor June Crespo and cinematographer Maddi Barber which documents the different states through which the sculptor’s material passes: rock, dust, liquid, and solid. Connecting the processes of hands that touch and manipulate the cement sculptures, and the rock extraction and transformation process in a quarry.

Tacita Dean The Wet Prayer in reference to the final plea of Saint Paul as he was shipwrecked off the coast of Malta. In this exhibition the ephemeral chalk of Dean’s ocean waves resonate with the sound waves recorded from the bay outside and played back within the gallery space.

Great curation by Susanna Greeves of engaging works in Alien Shores at White Cube Bermondsey. In every depiction of landscape is a reflection of the values and beliefs of the society that created it. Landscape is not the world, but the world through human eyes.

Exhibiting artists included: Michael Armitage A kind of belief, oil on Lubugo bark cloth.

Noémie Goudal Tropiques IV, inkjet print and the mesmerizing collapse of dissolving landscapes in Supra Strata, HD video as layer after layer warps, stetches, tears and falls until there is nothing.

Sky Hopinka shapeshifting video Mnemonics of Shape and Reason

Marguerite Humeau Skero ( the dormant), embellished silk double organza, cast rubber, sediments, pigments, handblown glass, milled walnut, polyurethane foam, epoxy resin and stainless steel paired with Darren Almond’s haunting Fullmoon@Baltic Coastline, latex print.

Hung Fai, optically intriguing The Six Principles of Chinese Painting: Transmission XXII (with Hung Hoi), ink and colour on paper.

Eva Jospin, Forêt, cardboard and wood.

Anselm Kiefer Brigach und Breg bringen die Donau zu Weg, three panels emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf and sediment of electrolysis on canvas.

Ken Gun Min Everything We Can Imagine As Light Baroque pearl, crystal, assorted gemstones, vintage beads, Korean pigment, silk embroidery, thread, found fabrics and oil paint on canvas. I love exuberance of his painting and the title made me think of the epic Anthony Doerr book All The Light We Cannot See and the beautiful film All We Imagine As Light written and directed by Payal Kapadia both of which I found deeply moving.

Isamu Noguchi Mountains Forming hot dipped galvanised steel.

Bagus Pandega and Kei Imazu, Artificial Green by Nature Green 4.1, Painting and erasing machine, water based paint on linen canvas, modular synthesiser, LED screen, PC and jelly palm tree. This was not in action when I visited.

The delicate detailed forests on the cusp of erasure of Tomás Sánchez

Emma Webster mega painting Borrow Every Forest which has echoes of Noemi Goudall’s video in it’s staged nod to artifice.

Robert Zehnder Hip Bone, oil on canvas on panel.

Out and About

Not to forget that as backdrop to everything that occurs at the moment is the horrific genocide being perpetrated in Gaza. It seems impossible that such cruelty can happen, is still happening and the powers that could stop it do nothing. Santander beach protest for a free Palestine that I was able to walk alongside.

Contemplating geological time, rock gazing along the Santander coast.

This sci-fi looking experimental lifeboat was designed by Spanish explorer Vital Alsar as part of his project El Hombre y la Mar. It has a capacity for 12 castaways and was towed across the Atlantic from Mexico to Santander in 1978, the culmination of his expedition to emulate the one undertaken in 1542 by Francisco de Orellana from Ecuador on foot across the Andes to navigate the length of the Amazon to the ocean. Through his expeditions, including the longest crossing of the Pacific Ocean by raft, Alsar wanted to prove that by respect for, and harmony with nature, humans can cross oceans, feed themselves and live sustainably.

Inspiral London; Re/Walk Festival: Rivers, Reservoirs, Ice and Sea. The colours and layers of Walthamstow revealed by artist Gail Dickerson and geologist Ruth Siddall both members of London Geodiversity a group concerned with the natural and human aspects of landscape, focused on the rocks, sediments, soils, the landscape topography and the processes that act on the landscape. We were not only enlightened on the deep time history of this urban landscape as we stood and imagined when glaciers reached as far as Epping and woolly mammoths wandered the land here but were instructed on how to make shimmering ink from galls, how to make charcoal in a bonfire and use earth’s rich pigments to paint with. Galls form when an organism (like an insect) penetrates or irritates plant tissue, triggering the plant to grow and enclose the organism.

Something I recently found out, amid the hype of the new movie, was that the Fantastic Four super hero characters got their powers from exposure to cosmic rays on an ill fated/serendipitous (depending on how you look at it) space mission. The original story was from 1961, the year Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit in space. Cosmic rays are a real danger to astronauts as these high energy radioactive particles can cause cell damage. Astronauts also experience directs hits on the retina from cosmic rays which they see as tiny flashes of light but this wouldn’t have been knowledge in 1961.

Reading

Patterns of Thought: The hidden meaning of the great pavement of Westminster Abbey by Richard Foster. The book offers a thorough investigation into of what is known as the Cosmati Pavement; a unique work laid down in 1268 by order of Henry III who commissioned workmen from Rome, led by Odoricus, who were skilled in a type of inlaid stone decoration known as Cosmati work.

The provenance of the stones and the history of the pavement is interesting but the most compelling aspect of the pavement is its intriguing inscription in Latin which promises the reader disclosure of the end of time. It translates as

Four years before this Year of Our Lord 1272,                                                                                             King Henry III, the Court of Rome, Odoricus and the Abbot                                                                            set in place these porphyry stones.                                                                                                                   If the reader wittingly reflects upon all that is laid down,                                                                               he will discover here the measure of the primum mobile:                                                                                              the hedge stands for three years,                                                                                                                             add in turn dogs, and horses and men,                                                                                                       stags and ravens, eagles, huge sea monsters, the world:                                                                             each that follows triples the years of the one before.                                                                                    Here is the perfectly rounded sphere which reveals                                                                                                    the eternal pattern of the universe.

The fateful day expressed in terms of the multiplied life-spans of various creatures apparently arrives at the sum of 19,683. The book offers fascinating insight into the beliefs of medieval cosmology, Christian philosophy and sacred geometry that together formed the thoughts that were meticulously laid down in stone.

It has been a busy few weeks preparing for The Geological Unconscious at Hypha HQ – a group exhibition, co-curated by Julie F Hill and myself, exploring themes of stone consciousness and human-mineral encounters, destabilising assumptions about passive matter and a stable Earth.

Image: From Roger Caillois’ stone collection: Malachite, masque africain, République démocratique du
Congo, 14 × 20.5 × 6 cm. Photographed in the Museum of Natural History, Paris by Julie F Hill.

Responding to Jason Groves’ inquiry into the mineral imaginary in his eponymous book, as well as the ‘Writing of Stones’ as proposed by writer and mineral collector Roger Caillois, the exhibition exposes the complex entanglements between the organic and the inorganic; the human and the lithic. The Geological Unconscious is viewed through disruptive Surrealist strategies, engagements with the aesthetics of geo-materiality and material processes that attend to the growth and transformation of matter. These artistic ‘excavations’ highlight the toll of extractive industries on our planet, whilst inspiring reverence for the geological lineages of deep, cosmic time. Theories of Animism and Panpsychism are also brought to
bear on ways of attributing agency to inorganic realms.

I am thrilled to be exhibiting with Julie F Hill, Charlie Franklin, Rona Lee and Deborah Tchoudjinoff.

An accompanying events programme includes an urban geology walk with Geologist Ruth Siddall, discussing the origins of the local built environment; an installation and tasting by chef Moonhyung Lee who explores human-mineral entanglements through digestion; a crystal growing workshop led by Julie F Hill and I will be offering visitors lithomancy readings every Friday afternoon.

Investigating human/mineral entanglements for new work to be installed at Hypha HQ for The Geological Unconscious. Video of human activity projected through distorting optical lenses transforms the anthropocentric position to imagine the perspective of the rock. The pattern of lenses is informed by the molecular structure of magnetite,

Magnetite is a naturally magnetic mineral found in many organism’s cells including human brain cells. Mined magnetite is used in industrial and mechanical processes and its use in combustion engines and braking systems is releasing nanoscale pollutant particles from traffic into the air which are finding their way into brain cells in high percentages causing concerns with links to degenerative brain diseases. I have been filming the stop start constant stream of traffic at a local roundabout and made a cast of a brain in gelatine with suspended iron filings. The filings oxidised and so the brain took on an iron red tinge and after a few days it cleaved down the centre and gradually as it dried became more and more chiton like.

Chitons are remarkable molluscs that have changed little in hundreds of millions of years. The chiton has hundreds of tiny eyes in its shell, which is made of eight articulating plates. It is the only known creature with lenses made of minerals rather than protein. Another distinctive feature of the chiton is having rows of teeth primed with magnetite, which aid its homing capabilities through magnetoreception and allow chomping on the hard rock surfaces it clings to. Inside the teeth of some species, the mineral santabarbaraite has been found, named after Santa Barbara, a mining district in Italy where it was first discovered and that honours Saint Barbara, who is the patron saint of mining and tunnelling. Santabarbaraite is also one of the few minerals named after a woman.

Fantastic day chiton hunting in the rockpools on the stunning East Sussex coast. Thanks to family who helped find these well camouflaged unique creatures.

Saint Barbara, was adopted by miners and underground workers as patron saint after the pursuit of geology and the widespread use of gunpowder in mining escalated in the 1600’s. She may have a dubious authenticity but her benedictions are still sought today with many statues installed at the entrances to Crossrail and a large ceremony on her saints day, 4^th December, performed by local priests before tunnelling went ahead. Even at CERN the epicentre of scientific rigour, a shrine to Saint Barbara was established at every shaft site of the Large Hadron Collider requiring excavation and a blessing performed even if the priest had to be lowered by crane down the shaft to achieve this.

My mother’s name was Barbara and her birthday 6^th December is very close to Saint Barbara’s day on the 4^th. It would be great to discover she arrived two days late but there is no one alive now to ask.

Small grains of magnetite are common in igneous rocks, formed from magma having cooled and solidified within the Earth’s crust, and also in metamorphic rock, formed when existing rock is transformed physically or chemically at extreme temperatures.

These processes happen on other planets as well as Earth and so magnetite has also been found in meteorites.

Using a digital microscope to look at the structure of the chondrite meteorite NWA 16975 discovered in the Sahara in 2024 which displays numerous and obvious chondrules and flecks of nickel iron in a fine grained matrix.

Also the fragment I have from the Diogenite meteorite NWA 7831 found in Morocco in 2013.

Looking at wonderfully colourful geological maps of Greece to locate the ancient area of Magnesia – the region where magnetite was first discovered and where its name has derived from – known as “magnes lithos” (stone from Magnesia). Definitely want to plan a research trip to this beautiful region around Thessaloniki.

Exhibitions

Whatshesaid collective of artists present Terra Incognita at Thames-side Studios Gallery – charting and cataloguing the disregarded, the everyday, its surface textures, accumulations, sedimentations.

Joao Villas and Victoria Ahrens showing in Spectral Matters at APT Gallery An understated beautifully curated show whose work references the ephemeral materiality of sound, video, photography and print. The work overlaps and crosses over, both artists responding to the other’s practice. The images create matter, as spectral matter gives agency to the materiality of its own making, while haunting the space with its frequency- it vibrates. The exhibition explores memory, technology and the Anthropocene- and how the disappearing materiality of the world is captured through ephemeral means.