Private View: Thursday 25 April, 6-9pm.
Exhibition continues:
Friday 26 April - 11-5pm
Saturday 27 April - 11-5pm
Sunday 28 April - 11-5pm
Within this exhibition, Lumen present the works of artists whose work relates to; astronomy, light, the sublime, divinity, infinity and incomprehension.
The concept of the sublime has long been associated to both fields of astronomy. Derived from the Latin “sublimis”, the sublime is translated as “set or raised aloft, high up”- etymologically the word “sublime” is very much linked to the space above our planet and to what may inhabit it.
“The greatest Objects of Nature, are methinks, the most pleasing to behold; and next to the Great Concave of the Heavens, and those boundless regions where the stars inhabit, there is nothing that I look upon with more than the wide Sea and the Mountains of the Earth... Think of God and his Greatness; and whatsoever hath but the shadow and appearance of the INFINITE, as all things that are too big for our Comprehension. They fill and overbear the Mind with their Excess, and cast it into a pleasing kind of Stupor and Admiration”
Burnett’s “Sacred Theory” , 1776
In Elizabeth Kessler’s “Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime”, Kessler looks at how Hubble images can be compared to sublime paintings of the American West.
“As defined by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, the sublime describes an extreme aesthetic experience, one that threatens to overwhelm even as it affirms humanities potential. For Kant, the sublime arises out of a tension between the senses and reason, and each faculty must be engaged to experience such an intense response”
Kessler then compares Immanuel Kant’s description of the sublime to Hubble images. She says “Through a reprisal of romantic tropes, the Hubble images once again invoke the sublime, and they encourage the viewer to experience the cosmos visually and rationally, to see the universe as simultaneously beyond humanity’s grasp and within reach of our systems of knowledge.”
Artists
Aliya Orr
Andy Sowerby & Matthew Grouse
Anja Hessler
Balint Bolygo
Bethany Rigby
Chloe Windsor
Coral Fowley
Hanna Mattes & Mason Juday
Jenny Duff
John Hooper
Joshua Space
Kim Sutherland
Laurie Reynolds
Lisa Pettibone
Louise Beer
Ludovica Colacino
Martha Gray
Marty Langthorne
Melanie King
Mi-Young Choi
Natascha Maksimovic
Natasha Sabatini
Nettie Edwards
Pauline Hall
Rebecca Bramwell
Rebecca Huxley
Rosie Reed Gold
Steven Barritt
Susan Eyre
The STEMettes
Willie Robb
Won Young Chan
Yambe Tam