As if light could be translated

Curated by Art Proper: Annika Kristensen & Samantha Williams

04.11.2015 - 20.11.2015
Opening 04.11.15 6-8pm
Artist Talks 19.11.15 6-7pm

‘As if light could be translated’ brings together a group of artists who are interested in ideas of the universe, astrology, constellations, space, distance and the science of stars. In lieu of a curatorial rationale, we have borrowed the words of poet Louis MacNeice, whose description of ‘holes, punched in the sky’, recalls the glorious wonder of grappling the infinitude of the universe and the incomprehensible passage of time required to translate light from the stars.

Star-gazer

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those almost intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.
And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain.

- Louis MacNeice

Biography

Anna Dunnill
Anna Dunnill is an artist and writer. Her practice investigates the nature of language and communication, with forms including drawing, collage, text, installation, zines and textiles.

Michaela Gleave
Operating across a diverse range of media, Michaela Gleave’s often temporal works question our relationship to time, matter and space, working with natural phenomena and tricks of perception within the frameworks that shape our knowledge of the universe.

Leanne Hermosilla
Through multimodal practice Leanne Hermosilla explores the doctrines, tools and practices of marginalised and alternative knowledge as a methodological framework for art making. Her research has spanned facets of psi phenomena, alternative therapies, spiritual practices, pagan rituals and divining practices.

Gabriella Hirst
Gabriella Hirst is a cross-disciplinary artist whose works responds to fragility of memory and personal narrative, exploring myth-making and archival impulses as part of the human condition.

Ash Kilmartin
Ash Kilmartin’s recent works draw references and forms from particular histories of design, focusing on specific tools and places as a way to think about the qualities of time and labour. She is interested in how certain objects might store and communicate memory.

Scott Morrison
Scott Morrison’s audiovisual practice investigates the synergistic properties of the seen and heard within the moving-image landscape.

Kate Robertson
Through photography, Kate Robertson is interested in working in the 'between space' of contemporary art and ethnography, in order to explore the inner workings of community and lived experience.

Lisa Sammut
Lisa Sammut’s multi-disciplinary practice seeks to gain a tangible sense of cosmic time and scale through material production.