Exquisitely carved marble statues falling out of the sky
Mixed media installation (97 x 131 x 110 cm)
“like exquisitely carved marble statues falling out of the sky, one after the other.” - Physicist Freeman Dyson, describing Paul Dirac’s equations predicting the existence of antimatter.
“I am always waiting for the moment when the picture plane is behind me, and at last I am through the looking glass.” - TJ Clark, The Sight of Death
“He said, you know, / everything in the world either is or isn’t that tree.” - Stephen Sexton, Cheryl’s Destinies
There are doppelgängers of our own atoms. There is an unobservable reality where something is hidden and untranslatable. In this landscape we have found a place to reflect on classicism in art and physics, and consider the problem of observation in quantum mechanics.
From the top lake at the Waterworks in Belfast, you can look across an island to a backdrop of Black Mountain and Solitude football grounds. The topography is understood through Euclidian geometries and has the planes, sight lines and dramatic narratives of a baroque landscape. It is a space activated by secular rituals of sacrifice, gesture, and meditation.
Exquisitely carved marble statues falling out of the sky is a recreation of this landscape as a zen garden, with principles of landscape painting as a guide. This is the first in a new series of studies, attempting to see past embodied knowledge of the world to another reality.
This piece was part of a group exhibition called Aggregate, which was part of the Freelands Artists Programme. More info: freelandsfoundation.co.uk
