‘What truth could be more unexpected ….than the one in which the mineral envisions while also being envisioned.’ Jason Groves, The Geological Unconscious
‘This is the blueprint of nature itself; both hidden and revealed in a nodule of silica.’ Roger Caillois, The Writing of Stones
The Geological Unconscious opened with an exceptionally busy Private View. It was a fantastic evening with lots of great feedback. With a multi-disciplinary approach, large-scale installations and sculptural works sit alongside embroidery, video, expanded print and photographic work, to create material intimacies that help situate us in scales beyond the human.
My video installation Lithos Panoptes imagines a view of the world from the perspective of the rock via the molecular structure of magnetite. Referencing a many-eyed giant of Greek mythology, Argos Panoptes (always eyes still awake), the work considers the perpetual vigilance of rock as record keeper and witness.
Video of human activity projected through distorting optical lenses transforms the anthropocentric position to imagine the perspective of the rock.
Magnetite is a mineral found in magma and metamorphic rock in Earth’s crust as well as in meteorites. Magnetite nanoparticles are also found naturally in organisms and are known to aid magnetoreception, a means whereby animals and birds orientate themselves by sensing polar direction. Through these actual and metaphoric lenses the relationship between the organic and non-organic is explored. Imagery includes allusions to scientific research into the dramatic overwhelming of innate magnetite in human brain cells by nanoscale pollutant particles of magnetite released into the air by traffic; the unique qualities of the chiton, a mollusc with hundreds of tiny eyes made from rock rather than biological material and teeth primed with magnetite and containing recently discovered mineral santabarbaraite; Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners and tunnellers, adopted when the use of explosives in mining escalated in the 1600’s and whose benedictions are still sought today with shrines installed at tunnel entrances at Crossrail and even at CERN, the epicentre of scientific rigour.
Also showing the video sculpture Belly of a Rock – describing an imagined place of chemical conversations at the intersection of the animate and inanimate. Under a crusted shell, surfaces slide and scrape along lines of fissure, distended innards ooze and rocks moan as they are distorted by untold pressure. The turbulent spiralling of the molten core births rock and lifeforms which are acted upon by the drag of an oscillating magnetic field.
Julie F Hill’s large-scale sculptural print installation Parent Body, uses scanning electron microscope imagery of samples recently returned from asteroid Bennu. The data features detail of carbon-rich and organic ‘nano-globules’ which have been theorised as ‘proto-cells’. The sculpture evokes astro-geological-biological material lineages across deep space and cosmological time. In a contrast of scale, Julie is also showing Return, 3d print of asteroid Itokawa cast in plaster-of-paris with a bead of Iridium. Iridium is an rare-earth element more abundant in asteroids than the Earth’s crust. This miniature work considers the cross exchanges between space and earth and in a gesture of reverse sample return (scientific missions and human extractive processes both take), a bead of Iridium is returned to the belly of asteroid Itokawa.
Charlie Franklin’s work considers control, physical experience and memory within the natural landscape. Her research includes how formations such as standing stones, grottos and geological debris remain or change across time. With a particular interest in materials and the properties they hold, she is experimental in her approach to making. Everyday items including cardboard, plastic sheeting and gaffer tape are repurposed to build the foundations of her sculptural work. Franklin also collects found imagery such as postcards and photographs, which she reworks to become something else.
In Litho/Domous, Rona Lee layers photographic plates from mass produced ‘coffee table’ books onto lighting panels, utilising the ‘bleed’ between them that this reveals, to evoke the tectonic instabilities of contemporary eco relations. Originating in the post war ‘golden age of capitalism’, and designed as statement pieces for home display, the aspirational focus of these image-rich publications on culture, travel, landscape, can be said to prefigure the arc of the smartphone in making the world consumable. At the same time titles such as The Mineral Kingdom and Library of Nations speak to the legacies of the Enlightenment project, offering up an order of things in which Mankind / the Anglophone world is positioned as ascendant and Nature – along with ‘other’ cultures – is ‘put on the table’.
Deborah Tchoudjinoff’s video installation The City of Gold takes a speculative look at Earth in the far future. Her work considers vast, beyond human, geological timescales where continents have once again become one. Past supercontinents create room to speculate upon future ones if we understand Earth as shifting, moving matter. Starting as a short fiction text Tchoudjinoff began to form an imagined world of cities in a future supercontinent of Amasia. The fictional cities named after the minerals that are heavily sought – rare earths, copper, uranium, gold, and coal – hinting at the narrative of an Earth depleted of the resources we rely on. The City of Gold is one of five imagined cities.
Once I start thinking of minerals as something we swallow to make our body function, I also start to think of how our body comes to be composed of these minerals, and that when we gradually decay after death we become mineral components again. So, the gesture of swallowing a tablet or vitamin pill is as magical, or let’s say as supernatural, as we want, because we really are swallowing a stone. – Otobong Nkanga
London once had many stones. They made convenient landmarks for gatherings and councils, or else marked boundaries or distances. As a result, they often crop up in place names – Link to The Londonist ‘Lost Stones of London’.
Gallery visits
Mónica Alcázar-Duarte in Cultural Reforesting Exhibition at Orleans House Gallery. In this exhibition, the artists remind us that we not only have a relationship with nature but also that we are nature. We are human animals. Together, with our more-than-human neighbours, we are a growing, singing, howling forest.
Under the big Suffolk skies of Orford Ness. Walking landscape that bears the scars, physical and emotionally resonant, of years of intense military top secret experiments. Here radar was developed, the aiming of bombs was refined, material vulnerability was tested with destructive, explosive projectiles under simulations of attack and famously it is the site of environmental tests during the late 50’s, early 60’s, in the development for detonation of the atomic bomb.
The weight of the shingle shored up around the buildings and on the roofs used to dampen the explosions.
There is a lot to respond to. It is now a spectacular nature reserve but apparently not so many birds here this year. We were lucky to see a short eared owl hunting and some gangly spoonbills in flight.
Kaori Homma Silent Echoes at The Watch House, Orford Quay – Inspired by Orford Ness, the UK’s only site of atomic experimentation, this exhibition explores the hidden histories and lingering memories within its landscape. Through the unconventional method of Aburi dashi or fire etching, the artist explores not only the visible remnants of the secret history of Orford Ness, but also the unspoken memories that linger in the air. Unlike ordinary drawings made by the pigments on the surface of paper, Homma’s works are made by fire which etches the images into the body of paper as a burn mark.
Electric Dreams at Tate Moderncelebrates the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, who pioneered a new era of immersive sensory installations and automatically-generated works. This major exhibition brings together ground breaking works by a wide range of international artists who engaged with science, technology and material innovation.
Desmond Paul Henry used a repurposed bombsight computer, designed to drop bombs more accurately, as developed at Orford Ness, to make a drawing machine which he then hand embellished.
The Pleasure of Misuse curated by Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek and Maria Hinel at Royal Society of Sculptors.‘The humour that springs from manipulating or referencing the mundane is paradoxically self-reflexive – appropriated objects suddenly appear anthropomorphic, our laughter becomes directed at ourselves and the intermittent absurdity of the human condition. The Pleasure of Misuse explores the mechanics and psychology of humour in the everyday, considering its potential to heal and its power to disarm, creating the sense of complicity and the space for self-reflection amid these anxious times.’
Images – Andy Holden, Ty Locke, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Cornelia Parker, Richard Wentworth
Samuel Zealey, Angela Eames, Tony Fleming, Charlotte Guerard, John Strutton and Kate Fahey in Heavenly Skeletons at Coleman Project Space – six contemporary artists whose work repositions drawing as an expanded multidisciplinary field. Heavenly Skeletons is a dynamic investigation of how drawing translates abstract concepts into tangible form…
Gorgeous show with thoughtfully chosen works that like Samuel Zealey’s vertiginous sculpture balance perfectly.
I am extremely grateful to a-n Artists Newsletter for the professional practice and creative development bursary that allowed me to visit Kielder Observatory in Northumberland and Eskdalemuir Observatory, Dumfriesshire to research how space weather impacts Earth’s magnetic field. I am also grateful to Claire Brown, site manager at Eskdalemuir Magnetic Observatory, for her time showing me around the site and explaining the many measurement processes that happen here. Despite the first survey of the site at Eskdalemuir, by the National Physical Laboratory in 1903, reporting back that “the weather was wet and stormy, and somewhat unfavourable to “field work” an observatory was established in this remote location, and recordings monitoring Earth’s magnetic field have been made from this site for 120 years.
I was able to visit the East Absolute Hut, the Underground Chamber, and the Seismic Vault along with the main building and museum rooms. The interaction of space weather with magnetic currents in the surface of the Earth is monitored here, and there is a camera on the roof to record visual aurora on a loop which is then sent to the British Geological Survey research teams in Edinburgh for analysis. Meteorological observations are also made here, along with solar radiation, atmospheric pollution, and seismological activity. The monitoring of radiation pollution was inaugurated here after the Chernobyl incident in 1986 when explosions at the nuclear plant scattered radioactive elements over a wide area across Europe.
95% of Earth’s magnetic field comes from the swirling outer core of the Earth and changes are due to convection pattern turbulence. As compasses have been used for over 400 years, and records kept of magnetic declination, there is a long history of measurements to refer to. The magnetic north pole had been drifting westwards at about 55km a year up until 2020 but has recently slowed to 45km. Consistency of observations is very important for magnetic field modelling, which is why many of the instruments at Eskdalemuir are located underground to maintain an even temperature.
Manual observations of the direction of the magnetic field are taken once a week from the East Absolute Hut. A small sliding window in the wooden hut is pulled back to reveal a distant fixed azimuth mark, not always easily visible during inclement weather. The mark, viewed through the fluxgate theodolite, must be lined up with the north south meridian line until the reading on the digital recorder is at zero. At the same time the digital clock must read zero. These numbers fluctuate rapidly but once both machines read zero a measurement of the position of the magnetic north pole can be recorded. A separate recording is taken through a series of 12 angles on the theodolite to give an accurate position. The instrument is very sensitive and the operator wears the same clothes each time with no metal fixings etc to ensure consistency in the records. The measurements are then plotted on a graph which usually follows a smooth line describing the drift of the magnetic north pole. Sudden deviations alert the operator to errors in the recordings or dramatic movement in the field known as a geomagnetic jerk.
The instruments in the underground chamber measure the strength of the magnetic field in three directions.
Surface readings are also taken automatically from instruments in small enclosures in the back field. During my visit these instruments were used to record data rather than those I came in close contact with.
In the vault, seismograph readings are made of vibrations in the bedrock. Seismic activity around the UK is fairly low level but sensitive structures can still be effected. These instruments pinpointed the magnitude 4.7 Longtown earthquake on Boxing Day 1979, and a swarm of tremors in the Dumfries area in 2001. The network also detected the air crash at Lockerbie in 1988, accurately recording the time of impact for crash investigators.
The museum holds a wonderful collection of mysterious instruments.
I attended Aurora Night at Kielder Observatory, established in 2008 under some of the darkest skies in Europe, to learn about how solar activity interacts with Earth’s atmosphere and creates the Aurora. The skies were very dark but also cloudy, and the sun was quiet, so no chance of seeing any aurora or even stargazing. However, we were given fascinating presentations on what causes the ethereal coloured lights seen at Earth’s poles and further towards the equator when solar activity is peaking.
We were also given some cool meteorites to handle including a carbonaceous chondrite, one of the most primitive objects in our solar system.
The sun rotates faster at the equator than at the poles and this causes disruption in its magnetic field. The solar flares that we see loop out from the surface of the Sun are caused by localised incidents of polarity, where plasma and particles loop around what could be thought of as areas acting like independent bar magnets. Millions of tons of plasma and chunks of magnetic field can be ejected during one coronal mass ejection and this matter hurtles out into space, if we are in the line of fire we will be bombarded with energetic particles and Earth’s magnetic field will be disrupted. The solar wind brings the particles from the Sun that envelop Earth and are drawn to the polar regions by the geomagnetic field. The aurora is caused by the interaction of these high energy particles (usually electrons) with neutral atoms in the earth’s upper atmosphere. The particle collisions that occur in the upper atmosphere cause photons of light to be emitted. The Earth’s geomagnetic field is not symmetrical and changes as the Earth rotates, it responds to the disturbance of particles coming from the Sun and as the field adjusts to this disturbance, magnetic energy is released, thereby accelerating charged particles to high energies. These charged particles are forced to stream along the geomagnetic field lines which is why the aurora lights can appear in vertical columns or other dancing shapes depending on where in the magnetosphere they entered the atmosphere. The colours of the lights are dependent on which atmospheric gas is being excited by the solar particles, oxygen emits either a greenish or a red light and nitrogen gives off a blue light.
Solar activity is monitored and space weather forecasts are posted online. To be in with a chance of seeing the Aurora in the UK, the KP level should be 5 or above as this index increases as the aurora’s southern edge moves southward. It can take up to three days for the particles ejected from the Sun in a CME to reach the Earth. The lights are fainter than sunlight so a dark night sky is needed to see them. It is also often the case that the greater photo sensitivity of a camera can capture lights that are barely visible to the human eye. The aurora is more likely to be visible during the spring and autumn equinox because of the angle of the Earth’s magnetic field in relation to the Sun, not because storms are more frequent.
2024 is predicted to have a high number of solar storms so there may be opportunities to see the Aurora but it also comes with the risk of severe space weather that could cause havoc with our reliance on satellites and related technologies.
The connection between solar activity and the impact on technology was made during the 1859 Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history. Strong auroral displays were reported globally and even seen in London, while sparking and fires occurred in multiple telegraph stations.
Satellites are vulnerable to space weather which can cause ongoing degradation or single event upsets where a charged particle can trigger a command in the satellite. During space weather events the ionosphere can become enhanced making it harder to communicate with satellites. Errors can occur in precision navigation and timing situations. Aviation crews are at risk to higher doses of radiation during solar activity and the HF radio communication system can have interference. Induced geoelectric fields in the ground can cause currents to flow in power grids and railway lines damaging transformers.
During the 2003 ‘Hallowe’en’ solar storms, when the largest single solar flare ever recorded was followed by severe storms, over half of all Earth-orbiting spacecrafts were impacted, disrupting satellite TV and radio services, GPS systems, damaging a Japanese scientific satellite beyond repair, sending several deep-space missions into safe mode or complete shutdown, and destroying the Martian Radiation Environment Experiment. The solar storms also led to communication problems for flights passing over the North Pole and Antarctic science groups had a full communications blackout for several days.
In acknowledging these risks we can gain an awareness of our vulnerability to the forces of nature and a respect for the power of the sun, the protection offered by our home planet and the interconnectedness of the universe.
Life Boat at APT Gallery
Life Boat brings together artists with a shared interest in exploring precarity as a site of dynamic transition. Each takes an investigative approach to the environmental, social and historical themes evoked by the lifeboat, as a means of addressing ecological crisis, liminal landscapes, close and distant horizons, boundaries and displacement, lines of rescue, navigation and transformation.
Very happy to be exhibiting with Rachael Allain, Caroline AreskogJones, Beverley Duckworth, Liz Elton, Kathleen Herbert, Kaori Homma and Anne Krinsky.
We had a fantastic opening night.
I was showing submīrārī (earthbound)and a new video installation Orbital – these works both consider transient landscapes, ecological landscapes on the cusp of disappearance and the digital landscape at risk from obliteration by an extreme solar storm.
submīrārī (earthbound), 2018, steel, earth, water, sublimation printed textile, 12 pieces dimensions variable approx. 200 x 200 cm. Reflections of a no longer certain world hover in pools fluctuating on the cusp of disappearance. The ethereal images float or submerge revealing the hidden activity of water which also refracts light across the surface prompting the viewer to repeatedly shift perspective. Donna Haraway, drawing from Latour, proposes the ‘Earthbound’ as those humans who are ready to rethink and create new narratives with Gaia at the centre, who recognise the entanglement of society and nature and aim to pursue a ‘nonarrogant collaboration with all those in the muddle’. The shift in perspective embraced by the ‘Earthbound’ embodies a grief shared with other species at loss of habitat and disappearing landscapes. It is not a nostalgia for paradise lost but a reappraisal of what paradise could be.
Orbital, 2024,Back projection video, mini screen array, board, installation 122 x 200 x 50 cm, video 05:44 min. An exploration of the potential risks of space weather on human technology and infrastructure and non-human navigation.
The Sun is about 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) from Earth, but space weather can affect Earth and the rest of the solar system. It can cause damage to satellites and electrical blackouts on Earth. Small satellites have come to dominate low Earth orbit, and we have become reliant on this technology for communication, military strategy, and data gathering.
A blast of high energy particles hitting Earth during a solar storm can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, confusing birds that use this for navigation. In America, pigeon racers postpone the big race if bad space weather is predicted. There is also new research that might suggest the number of satellites orbiting Earth and the growing satellite space junk graveyard could weaken Earth’s protective magnetic field, making us even more vulnerable to space weather and cosmic radiation.
The gallery location in Deptford, once a major departure point for maritime trade and scientific expeditions from Deptford Dockyard, resonates with the exhibition’s concept of being ‘at sea’, in the sense of negotiating the unknown. It was Deptford Dockyard that Edmund Halley set sail from to make the first circumnavigation of the Earth to map the declination of the magnetic field. The ship that he captained, the Paramour, was the first vessel built specifically as a research vessel and launched in April 1694.
Rachael Allain’s current doctoral project ‘Above and Below the Horizon: A practice-led investigation into liminal thresholds of bodies of water’ has been undertaken in response to various aquatic locations. The work shown in this exhibition documents mapping aspects of an unexpected journey of discovery made in the upper reaches of the Arctic Ocean during an international art and science expeditionary residency in the Svalbard Archipelago during midsummer 2022. ‘Circumnavigation of a ‘Bergy Bit’’ is a film with sound of a close and intimate encounter with a section of an iceberg, calved from its mass and found beached and melting close to shore in Eolusneset, Sorgfjorden in the Bay of Grief.
In 2019 Caroline AreskogJones spent time on the Sea of Hebrides making a series of responses whilst researching more viscerally the ocean as a site of ‘field research’ and gathering recordings. ‘Sounding Line’ (2024, sail, audio/video single channel as projection 07:32 min. Sail courtesy of Sail Britain) was created in deliberate wave format being inspired by Jean Painleve, whose hybrid films overlaid with jazz soundtracks occupy the uncertain space between art and science. Oskar Jones was invited to create the sonic composition in response – the saxophone being a wind instrument of extraordinary virtuosity. Since 2023 Caroline has been visiting the Natural History Museum Cetacean Archive – at the invitation of Principal Curator, Richard Sabin. Through conversations including those with environmental historian Sophia Nicolov, her research has broadened and this updated presentation includes recordings of the two remaining Orcas who inhabit the Sea of Hebrides courtesy of the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust.
Anne Krinsky Boiling Seas Acid Seas (Work-in-progress), 2024, Video, 12:26 min, filmed on location at Long Beach Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest.
A History Of The Receding Horizon (2015, HD Video, 16:9, sound, projection, 28 min) is a digital film installation by Kathleen Herbert, exploring different concepts of time within the landscape. Based upon Kielder in Northumberland, the narrator whose script was developed from the artists research interviews with environmental historians, astronomers at Kielder Observatory and local people from the area, leads the viewer through the film weaving together past, present and future timelines. The Chaplin (2006, standard HD video, 4:3, sound, monitor, 07: 20 min) is a film installation recalling a conversation held between the artist, Kathleen Herbert, and the Port Chaplin based at the Mission to Seafarers centre in Avonmouth docks. The Port Chaplin boards every ship as it enters the docks, his role is to provide emotional and practical support to seafarers while they are in port. The piece was produced while Kathleen was based at the centre researching for a new commission by Picture This Moving Image and Situations Bristol. Her research at the centre culminated in a 3 day voyage aboard a cargo ship in which she took her camera and the extracts of film from this journey provide the visual background of the film.
Fragility and vulnerability are embodied in layered works on paper, a large suspended sculpture made from delicate compostable material and living installations incorporating transient elements that transform over the exhibition period.
Anne Krinsky has been working on a research-based project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change since 2018. Coastal wetlands worldwide are at risk from rising sea levels caused by climate change, while inland watersheds are threatened by heat, drought and agricultural runoff. These ecosystems are critical to the plants and animals that inhabit them and to human survival. She is drawn to biodiverse habitat edges – where water meets land or where fresh water meets the sea and is interested in recording both the beauty of – and human impacts on – fragile habitats. She uses documentation as an archive of raw materials to generate work in other media, including site-responsive print and video installation and tactile work on paper. In responding creatively to wetlands and watersheds, she wants to raise public awareness of climate threats to these life-sustaining habitats. Before They Vanish, 2024, 24 small works: paper, mylar, acrylic, digital print, mixed media, 150 x 300 cm.
Caroline AreskogJones Float 2023, Paper lithography on shoji, 60 x 120 cm forms part of a series of works inspired by the Natural History Museum Cetacean Archive, rendered onto Shoji paper, used in museum conservation.
Liz Elton begins in landscape and still-life painting to explore the potential of waste and the recycling of matter. Her ephemeral work is often made on compostable ground, coloured with kitchen waste and embedded with seeds. Showing Habitat, 2024, Compostable cornstarch food waste recycling bags, household textiles from a house clearance, vegetable dyes from kitchen waste, water colour, silk, soil from various locations and gleaned from vegetables bought in the market, vegetable seeds saved from food preparation, seeds of varieties of self-seeding edible plants typically found on the wasteland around Deptford creek, found wood, Approx. 360 x 250 x 150 cm (variable).
Working with living sculpture and installation, Beverley Duckworth creates spaces and moments which connect the smallest, poetic actions of plants with precarious issues facing humanity. Her practice centres on the afterlife of the discarded and is rooted in small acts of reparation – sewing scraps together, watering fragile seedlings and nurturing the regenerative power of composting from waste materials. Works include Husk, 2024, Discarded cardboard, thread, flax, seeds, water, 90 x 70 x 280 cm; Raze, 2023, Discarded clothes, binder, 48 x 51 x 10 cm.
Etchings and spatial interventions explore the use of the natural world as human resource and land as a site of geopolitical conflict.
Kathleen Herbert Lost Dimensions I, II, III, 2022-23, Photopolymer Etching on Somerset Satin Paper, 75 x 57 cm.
Kaori Homma’s multi-site Homma Meridian project asks us to reconsider and to challenge the cartographic demarcations that govern so much of our world and that we so frequently take for granted. With the deceptively simple move of ‘repositioning’ the Greenwich Prime Meridian, the artist radically shifts our perspective, as well as our sure footing, both figuratively and even literally. At each of its iterations (which have included Budapest, Margate, Wales, Paris, London and Pennsylvania) the artist and participating audiences draw an impermanent line running north-south, always using ephemeral materials, as a substitute for the ‘Prime’ meridian. The project’s act of displacement and its ephemerality work to highlight the imaginary nature of boundaries and to shake up our perception of our position on the earth as it spins on its titled axis. Works include Homma Meridian, Deptford, 2024, Vinyl Letters, tape, dimensions variable; Floating 0 degree Longitude, 2024, Abrudashi Fire Etching, Water, Bucket, 60 x 38 x 25 cm; Four corners of the earth, 2024, Aburidashi Fire Etching on Paper, 50 x 80 x 3 cm
Alongside the exhibition we held a series of events including a Low Tide Walk in Deptford Creek – led by Anne Krinsky in partnership with Creekside Discovery Centre followed by refreshments and a tour of the Life Boat exhibition at APT Gallery just two minutes from this amazing natural habitat in Deptford.
FIELDWORK AS PRACTICE – A live sonic performance by Oskar Jones and a conversation led by Caroline AreskogJones bringing together Oliver Beardon (Founder and Skipper of ‘Sail Britain’) Richard Sabin (Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum, London) and Sophie Nicolov (AHRC Early Career Research Fellow, Natural History Museum, London) for a discussion around the potential overlaps between ‘field’ and research, artistic practice and ecological activism.
Homma Meridian and the Secret of Invisible Ink/Fire Etching Workshop where Kaori Homma shared her technique using Invisible Ink as part of the Aburidashi/Fire Etching process, historically used for espionage, she also gave a fascinating presentation on the history of this process and how it relates to her own art practice and her Homma Meridian Project.
In tackling concepts of the perilous, the vulnerable and the lost, Life Boat raises the alarm on the passive position of waiting for rescue and encourages urgent action in troubled waters.
Gallery Visits
Women In Revolt at Tate Britain. A lot of documentation here of social history. Many texts, posters, zines, not so much art but a great piece from the inimitable Susan Hiller, with personal incites accompanying images of her ever increasing pregnant belly such as: – She writes, one is born into time. And in time introduced to language….Or rather — one is born. And through language, introduced to time…Perhaps even — one is born, in time, through language.
Mary Yacoob, captivates with astonishing precision of detail as always in Brutal Space at Bobinska Brownlee exploring the subject of future adaptations to life in space.
Honoured to have The Forms installed in the magnificent Wells Cathedral as part of Wells Art Contemporary
The immutable truths Plato discovered in geometry belong to the realm of abstract thought and ideals he called The Forms. Twelve pentagons form a dodecahedron which Plato defined as ‘a fifth construction, which the god used for embroidering the constellations on the whole heaven.’
Today it is dark matter that science believes holds the stars in the heavens. In visualisations of dark matter created from cosmological data provided to me by KIPAC Stanford University, we see familiar organic patterns emerge; the fronds of dark matter spanning between galaxies could be the spreading branches of trees or the veins under our skin.
In Plato’s the allegory of the cave, those in the cave mistake shadows thrown by the fire onto the cave wall as reality; in a similar way we are guessing what dark matter is from the shadows we see, such as gravitational lensing and galaxy rotation curves.
Thrilled with the location of my work in the Lady Chapel, interacting with the patterns and geometry of the Minton tiled floor.
Working on Breath of Stars – making a data base of video clips which will be accessed and play for 12 seconds every time a cosmic ray event is recorded by the detectors. The star bursts are made from cloud chamber footage. The size of the star burst will relate to the amplitude of the cosmic ray that hits the scintillator plastic. More energy = bigger starburst.
Testing testing. Running the cosmic ray detectors at my studio to see if I get similar results to at home and yes, seems fairly consistent. Maybe slightly more hits. Thinner roof!
Exciting developments in the acid room etching the directional magnetic steel sample I have been given. Trying to uncover the grain structure like a jigsaw pattern of this magical matter hidden under a grey coating. I had no luck trying to reveal the pattern just by sanding. I then tried sanding the coating away quite aggressively and etching in 1:4 nitric acid for 10 minutes. This did reveal the hidden structure but not very cleanly and weirdly sanding or polishing after etching made the pattern disappear again.
Then I tried finer sanding plus 10 minutes in a copper sulphate solution with just a careful wipe with a sponge to clean the plate and was quite happy how things were progressing. I quite like the coppery tinge.
I discovered the pattern comes from rolling single crystals of an iron silicon alloy into thin sheets to minimise magnetic losses for use in transformers. I decided to have another try with nitric acid on a larger piece just to compare but had very poor results.
An attempt with copper sulphate again on a larger piece this time wasn’t quite so clean as before although the structure is visible. I am wondering if there is a better side to etch – both sides look the same but maybe there is a difference in how deep the structure is hidden.
Working through some ideas for a proposal has helped with focus for video work using iron filings over a boulder (made from paper clay) set in a cave. Working title Belly of a Rock which will be a video sculpture.
The same with some experiments with vessels and salt crystals. Exploring possibilites.
Out of Studio
The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition
Favourite stands were obviously those with a connection to magnets or cosmic rays.
Exciting research from a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, Keele University and MICA Biosystems on remote controlled healing to treat spinal injuries and tissue regeneration using ground-breaking advances in nanotechnology and magnetics.
Magnetic nanoparticles exhibit superparamagnetism, meaning that these tiny magnetic particles flip magnetic orientation between north and south rapidly at random appearing to be non-magnetic unless subjected to a magnetic field. When a magnetic field is applied, the particles’ ‘north’ and ‘south’ align with the field direction, turning the nanoparticles’ magnetic properties ‘on’. By binding these nanoparticles to stem cells and injecting them into the body they can be directed to the target injury site using a controlled magnetic field outside the body. Once at the injury site the magnetic force can be turned on and off to stimulate the cells controlling cell behaviour and biological pathways speeding up the healing process.
When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite.
The Natural History Museum were displaying meteorite samples including a large fragment of the Winchcombe meteorite, an extremely rare carbonaceous chondrite observed entering the Earth’s atmosphere as a fireball over Gloucestershire at 21:54 hours on 28 February 2021 and landing in a family home driveway. It was the first time in 30 years, a meteorite has been recovered in the UK. It’s unexpected arrival from the asteroid belt near Jupiter was captured on a system of UK Fireball Alliance cameras as well as local CCTV and doorbell cameras.
Most iron meteorites are thought to be the cores of asteroids that melted early in their history. The crystal structure (image left) known as Widmanstätten patterns in iron meteors forms from criss-cross plates of an iron-nickel alloy. Slicing the meteor at various angles reveals different patterns.
I was informed that this texture was made visible by etching the meteorite in hydrofluoric acid though it may also need polishing. This made me hopeful to reveal the hidden structure of the directional magnetic steel sample (image right) provided to me by Union Steel Products which is currently hidden by an opaque grey coating over a thin layer of smooth steel. I first saw this type of extra magnetic steel at the National Physical Laboratory open day. It is no longer manufactured in the UK and so am grateful for the sample.
Very excited to talk to Lancaster University about their new Extreme Space Weather Monitoring research. The first international network of ground-level neutron detectors to measure the number of high-energy charged particles striking the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space was established in 1957 but these used toxic materials and are costly to run so many were decommissioned. There are only 50 left worldwide and none in the UK. Lancaster are developing a new-generation radiation detector intended to help protect safety-critical systems and national infrastructure against the effects of severe space weather. Space radiation can affect aircraft systems, communications, and cause current surges in power grids and other ground-level systems. There are significant risks to the infrastructures we rely on in daily life so predicting solar storms could provide a warning to shut down or move vulnerable systems before they get hit.
I asked Professor of Space Physics Jim Wild and his colleague Andrew Parker from the school of engineering radiation protection dept. about the event count for my own cosmic ray detector and they thought it sounded about right. As I cannot be sure of the quality of my plastic scintillator the count may not be scientifically accurate in measuring all events but I can feel confident that events I do record and will use to trigger code to display video starbursts are from direct contact with a particle that has travelled from outer space.
Alienarium 5 Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster at Serpentine Gallery. Managed to miss the seductive glimpse of The Closed Planet and any holograms but did experience the VR though connections promised with other alien beings failed to materialize – there were other forms floating in the distance but no way to communicate. I suppose this reinforced the difficulty of cross being communication. The reading list turned to cushions had become a toddler soft play area and while the 360 panorama was impressive in scale and content included it felt ‘educational’ as opposed to enlightening.
Theaster Gates, the Serpentine Pavilion 2022 Black Chapel draws inspiration from many of the architectural typologies that ground the artist’s practice. It is impressive in scale and simplicity.
I am a big fan of Lindsay Seers work and loved the Artangel commission Nowhere Less Now at The Tin Tabernacle, Kilburn in 2012.
This was my post at the time;
Lindsay Seers work is narrative but is not a linear story. The past present and future entwine with the thoughts of multiple characters. Everything is connected but like in a dream those connections are just beyond grasp as they shift and change and merge. I wasn’t sure if I fell asleep or not, my eyes seemed to be open but I had those moments of falling from consciousness being tucked up in a warm blanket can induce. The haunting sea shanty played in the headphones ‘ the sea will take her slender body..’ over and over, a narrative from one side in Seers soft tone then someone speaks abruptly from behind, another voice is heard at a a distance, some music starts up and all the while the dual projections onto giant convex and concave spheres in the disorienting location of an upside down ships hull sweeps through history into a CGI future and back to the present. We were given a free book on exit, it is another layer to the whole experience and I have no idea what is true and what is fiction, this means the fantastical can appear to be reality and I like that. There are many things to wonder about in Lindsay Seers work. In Seers work the explanation about the work is part of the work and so may be just a fiction as much as the work itself.
Jump ten years to Cold Light a collaboration with Keith Sargent at Matt’s Gallery in their new swanky location at Nine Elms. Subtle intervention has been sacrificed for the installation which is engaging on a different more immediate sensory level of flashing lights on shiny objects. The work is inspired by the futurist Nikola Tesla and his experiments with electricity in the early part of the 20th century. Cold light refers to light produced electrically rather than by fire. The use of low-fi silver foil and extractor vent tubing, along with scaffolding and clunky robotics give an impression of the home inventor. This would have looked futuristic in Tesla’s lifetime. I experienced the VR CGI environment, it was cold place emotionally despite the pigeons which were apparently Tesla’s true love. Is this the CGI future alluded to in past work?
Fabulous work from Grace Ndiritu An Absolute River at Lux. An Absolute River’s title derives from Borges’ theories on the fluidity of time. Borges features as a fictional protagonist in Ndiritu’s Black Beauty, and his notion of “An Absolute River” was inspired by Heraclitus’ “No Man ever Steps in the Same River Twice”. Her films blur the lines between different time frames and explore themes of media, authorship and historical narratives, whilst expanding on notions of temporality. Her work is so good.
In some far off place Many light years in space I’ll wait for you Where human feet have never trod Where human eyes have never seen I’ll build a world of abstract dreams And wait for you
The Ruins of Time at St. Augustine’s Tower, Hackney. “Tower” is part four of the “Ruins of Time” project, organized by LME (London – Munich Exchange) exploring the passage of time and its specific expression in the place, space and architecture of the site. Curated by Eleonora Bourmistrov and Milena Michalski who are exhibiting alongside Myra Brooklyn, Risha Gorig, Angelika Hofmann, Monika Kita, Brigitte C. Reichl, and Marcia Teusink. Many thoughtful works and a marvellous installation from Eleonora Bourmistrov.
The London Group exhibition including work from Victoria Arney (birdsong translated into woodcuts), Carol Wyss (examining the ribcage as protective enfolding), Sandra Crisp (blender generated molecules with embedded culture – a culture with culture) and Beverley Duckworth (Dust from the Sahara) in Catch Your Breath at Morley Gallery.
‘Catching one’s breath can happen if surprised, impressed or even shocked by something, such as an extraordinary object or image stumbled upon that instantaneously changes a familiar viewpoint. It can also be a time to pause or reflect and take stock.’
Working on The Breath of Stars I have been thinking about the breath and its active nature and inter-actions so it was interesting to see the many interpretations here.
Cloud Point at Paradise Row curated by Nicolas Bourriaud in collaboration with Radicants.
Text from the Gallery:
The artists (Nicolas Aguirre, Hicham Berrada, Marieke Bernard Berkel, Alice Channer, Pakui Hardware, My-Lan Hoang-Thuy, Zarah Landes, Estrid Lutz, Tala Madani, Pamela Rosenkranz) in this exhibition belong to a generation for whom no material is natural anymore. Matter, in its totality, is both form and content, subject and object, nature and culture. In other words, there is no neutral background in today’s images, but streams and active forces.
Cloud Point gathers artists who don’t consider objects, products or masses in their work, but rather the atomic structure of our surroundings, and theirs. They are particularly interested in the in-betweens — processes of liquefaction, moments of coagulation, condensation points… The emergence of this molecular gaze in contemporary art also reflects in theory and politics.
Politics goes molecular as Felix Guattari had already stated, in the 1970’s, talking about a necessary ‘molecular revolution’. We see how gas, oil, bacterias, viruses or chemicals become the new agents of History. Zygmunt Bauman analysed postmodern capitalism as a process of liquefaction of our institutions. Today Karen Barad describes matter, at its molecular stage, as pure ‘queerness’. And according to Rosa Braidotti, ‘Capital seeks and reduces body fluids to merchandise: the sweat and cheap blood of the labor force available throughout the Third World; but also the fluids of the desire of First World consumers who reduce their existence to a commodity by transforming it into a hyper-saturated state of confusion.’
I have returned to my BA dissertation from 2007 The Communication of Ecological Concerns Through Contemporary Artistic Practice to look at excerpts where I discussed the theories of Nicolas Bourriaud.
‘The intertwining of ecological and political processes with artistic practises is explored in conjunction with the particular theories of Bruno Latour, Nicolas Bourriaud and Zygmunt Bauman. These writers all speak of a need to establish new ways of communicating about the complexities of our relationships to our environments as we move through different spaces to those of the past. In light of this necessity, the precarious balance an artist must achieve to engage a contemporary urban audience with an environmental message, without losing sight of their aesthetic, or becoming embroiled in the nullifying production of commodity, is debated.’
‘Bourriaud documents the shift in focus from the visual to the relational during the 1990’s when new forms of communication available through modern technologies coincided with an economic depression. For the artist there was a lack of funding for the spectacular but also the opportunity to experiment with spaces previously given over to exchange and barter. The artists took as their medium something they found lacking in other areas of daily life; social relations which did not involve supplier-customer exchanges. The loss of personal interactions from daily life as more and more functions were performed by or through machines and computers were reborn in the processes of participatory practises where the audience was invited to experience rather than behold.’
‘An artwork’s short life span is not necessarily a reflection of the insatiable appetite of the gallery going public to consume and discard art as any other commodity. In using relational aesthetics the artist deliberately steps outside of this cycle.Artists who base their practises on exchanges of experience and communication through tangible means which have no value as art outside a temporal set of circumstances give the public a chance to experience a different type of social bond. From the ethos of relational aesthetics is born the possibility of art infecting the collective subjectivity. Artists whose work sidesteps the rules of the market place create a ‘social interstice,’ a small space in which to explore relations with the world. An interstice does not operate in the same way as a message, which is akin to advertising and belongs in the world of marketing. The space created must be inviting or intriguing to draw the audience into a realm of possibility, to start a conversation not give a lecture.’
I selected seven works alongside my own for an informal tour at Wells Art Contemporary to promote conversations inspired by the works. Shield – Peter Newell-Price, Chronologer (chalk and bone) – Paul Tuppeny, Screw Up Repeat – Kate McDonnell, Beneath the Heavens III – Kaori Homma, Route 339 – John Ball, Everyone was a bird – Caro Williams, Two-Sided I & II – Aliceson Carter.
Out of thousands of submissions, this year’s judging panel, Matthew Burrows MBE, Dale Lewis and Nana Shiomi, selected a shortlist of 120 artworks by 111 artists for the 2022 exhibition.
29 site-specific installations have also been selected by Clare Burnett and Jacquiline Creswell to stand as interventional responses to the architectural, spatial and spiritual aspects of Wells Cathedral.
Beguile the Night exhibition at Dark Matter Studio had quite a spiritual ambience.
Gary Colclough Uprooted
The quiet and solitude of after dark meanderings in creative processes came across in a collection of work imbued with mystery.
Patrick Jackson Companion of Odysseus, Fleeing the Blinded Polyphemus
The intensity of a directed concentration was evident in an opening up of space to reflect and wonder.
Mary Yacoub Proposal for Modernist Teepee in Poured Concrete
Marianne Walker Grotta (Neo-Delphic)
Zoe Dorelli The Division of the Waters
The exhibition Stranger than Fiction at the Science Museum was billed as questioning the truth and reliability of photographs.
Fauna – Joan Fontcuberta
Joan Fontcuberta is supposedly setting up a fiction that, through documentation, the viewer is lulled into believing.
The fauna series is both visually striking and disappointing. Bad taxidermy and impossible juxtapositions create sad undignified rather then magical creatures.
In some of the black and white aged photographs there might be something fantastical to be grasped at
Joan Fontcuberta
but placing the evidence of the constructed enigma next to the documentation means all illusion vanishes.
This may be the intention.
Joan Fontcuberta
The Orogenesis and Constallations seires were more rewarding for me, using a more subtle intervention in photography resulted in dramatic landscapes that you could get lost in.
The annual Deptford X festival proved an opportunity to catch up with new friends met though the neo:print prize.
Kaori Homma presented an interactive performance in the square as part of her ongoing interest in the conventions of the east/west divide set by the meridian line at Greenwich.
Homma Meridian – Deptford X
Carol Wyss was showing her beautiful large etchings in a summer house in the green and tangled setting of Old Tidemill Wildlife garden.
Carol Wyss
Carol constructs her etchings from images of human bones, building up the form with multiples of shoulder blades or tibia.
Also in the wild garden was artist Anita Gwynn with her detailed mono prints installed inside a polytunnel.
Anita Gwynn
In the crypt of the magnificent St. Pauls Church in Deptford were 2014 Art Action UK award winners Komori & Seo showing their moving new work derived from working among the victims of the 2011 Tsunami and nuclear fallout disaster in Japan ‘Moving the Mountain’
Seo and Kamori Moving the Mountain
We watch a woman returning to where her childhood town once stood, where her parents were swept away along with her neighbours and all the buildings, but not her memories. She washes and folds her parents clothes over and over, trying to dislodge all the sand from the fibres knowing every tear and abrasion in the fabric represents a trauma to her parents bodies during their violent death.
The magnitude of the loss has the same incredulity as a myth, how can a whole community be swept away so suddenly and with such force. The machinations of the gods seen in the power of nature.
The stories that Xanthe Gresham-Knight tells also hold you in awe. In her stories people are searching too. Searching for truth, searching for paradise.
I have been introduced to the wonderful Treadwell’s Bookshop. A bit late for my dissertation research but for future interests it promises information on any aspect of Western pagan spirituality or the esoteric traditions of Europe.
Downstairs with wine and snacks Xanthe gave an amazing physical performance of hypnotic singing, playing the accordion and morphing into a myriad of characaters.
She tells of Celtic poets who would make a boat from the flash of a teardrop and sail out to the Land of the Ever Young in search of a goddess.
Centuries later, a man, desperately googling for a Paradise Bride accidentally summons ‘Her’ again. … ancient myths of Britain and Ireland collide with the modern world.
It couldn’t have been more apt, a collision of ancient and modern still searching for paradise.
More storytelling at Holborn Library with Jose Damasceno’s PLOT an Artangel commission.
Local authority libraries on the whole are not very inspiring environments. On the ground floor the architectural figures on the ceiling and decimated encyclopeadias did not manage to compete with the setting.
It wasn’t until we reached the fourth floor that we were suddenly transported into the drama of a possible plot.
A bizarre empty theatre space of panelled wood and reflections
Jose Damasceno
lit with the pink fluoerescne escaping from the small high windows of a room where a neon sculpture is held and is only made visible via a monitor in the outside corridor.
Jose Damasceno
Another world where the laws of physics appear overturned is the digital space.
Digital Revolution at The Barbican
Our known perceptions of landscape are challenged here.
will.i.am debut artwork with Yuri Suzuki
There was spectacle in immersive scale allowing you to physically enter the space
and engage with common fantasies
communicating with other species
being plunged into a drama set in the place of your birth
even Kessingland
or being transformed into a bird and flying
Chris Milk The Treachery of Sanctuary
There was a reminder of research from my dissertation –
the dystopian future of London in Kibwe Tavare’s short film, Robots of Brixton
Robots of Brixton
I didn’t end up writing about the film but it made me want to see it and it kind of fitted with ideas of urban bad/rural good that abound through the ages.
The mythologizing of the rural began even before Virgil’s ‘Bucolics’ and continues today massaged by technological spectacle in mass entertainments such as ‘Avatar’.
Handing in the final document of my dissertation ‘Finding Paradise’ unleashed a new energy.
Back for my second year at the RCA its time to put all that thinking into my work.
After such a break from making over the summer spent at the computer screen I thought the best thing to do was to just get on with something.
I started a soft ground etching of the Chapel of Rest in Paradise Industrial Estate, Hemel Hempstead.
While working with my magnifying lens there was a moment of euphoria – a bit like finding that illusive paradise
Susan Eyre 