I am delighted to share that I was awarded a second Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant in March, 2023. This award will enable me to do several sound and video courses, alongside having mentoring from two curators that I greatly admire. It is a significant investment in my practice and will enable me to spend much more time in the studio over the summer. Thank you so much to Arts Council England!
Commission/ FORMAT23 Festival x Derby Cathedral
I am proud to share the news that I was awarded a commission from FORMAT23 x Derby Cathedral late last year. I have been working on the project for a number of months, and am excited to install the work in March 2023 in the magnificent Derby Cathedral.
Title of exhibition: Gathering Light
March 17 - to May 21 2023
Gathering Light
Gathering Light is an installation that reflects my experience of grief. I created this work after losing my wonderful father in 2021. One thing that has helped me traverse the path of grief has been watching the ever changing skies from my home in Margate and the Moon above at night time. Walking along the cliff top and seeing the different birds and insects moving from one flower to another and the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, helped me to process the enormity of our family’s loss. The constant to and fro of the tides has given an earthly framework to my thinking.
How does the Earth keep spinning
Seeing the sky out of my window has helped me to connect my reality to that of Earth, and our cosmic history. It helped me to think of other days, other nights. Other skies we have all looked up at, other possibilities. Other moments and other shared memories.
Gathering Light was created by taking photographs of the sky, usually just after sunrise, over 40 consecutive days to reflect the 40 days of contemplation of Lent. During this time I kept a diary of thoughts on how I was processing my own feelings.
Read more here.
Book your free ticket to the PV here.
Image: Infra-red photograph of the River Roding in Ilford by Beal High School 6th Form Student Neeti Siyani
super/collider/ Changing Currents Exhibition
Exhibition opening
Wednesday 8 February 4 – 7.30 PM
SPACE Ilford
10 Oakfield Rd, Ilford IG1 1ZJ
(Rear of Redbridge Town Hall)
Surveying the ancient River Roding, students from Beal High School have been working with Arup, super/collider and the River Roding Trust to explore the impact of the built environment and the choices we make on the natural world.
This exhibition presents the photographic, film, written and audio evidence collected by the students during a series of workshops and visits to the river. Together, they invite visitors to consider the way in which we interact with the world around us, both individually and collectively.
With thanks to Arts Council England, River Roding Trust Arts Associate Andrew Brown, River Roding Trust and Beal High School.
International Women's Day Auction with Art on a Postcard
I was really excited to be asked to contribute to the Art on a Postcard International Women’s Day Mini Auction, curated by Bakul Patki. The sale of the works will raise money for Hepatitis C Trust and their campaign to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030.
I have donated three postcard sized images which have each been made by digitally manipulating photographs of the sky, taken in Margate, UK. They explore my fascination with Earth, the Universe and the existence of life, against the backdrop of the climate crisis.
Bidding open 23rd February – 9th March, hosted by The Auction Collective.
Find more about my actction and how to bid here.
The Prviate View will be on 7 March, 6-8PM at Fitzrovia Gallery Private View RSVP.
Earth I
Earth II
Earth III
Nature's Way/ Online exhibition
I am really pleased to be included in Nature's Way, an online exhibition curated by Georgia Watkins for Patience Gallery opening on 10 February. I will be showing my film, Revolving through the Megacosm.
Nature’s Way will be Patience Gallery’s first online exhibition, showcasing work of artists and writers alike. As the gallery’s debut, it will explore innovative ideas about how art shows are curated and will experiment with creating dialogues between visual and written art.
The title, Nature’s Way, was a prompt for work responding to our natural world. It asked for participants to showcase work that both highlights its beauty as well as discussing an understanding of its complexity and the issues within it.
SPACE Studios x ARUP Commission
super/collider was recently commissioned by SPACE Studios and ARUP Engineering to work with Beal High School and the River Roding Trust in Ilford, London. Our project explores the health of the river and the future of the climate crisis with a group of 30 sixth form students over a series of five engagement days.
Yesterday we ran workshops along the River Roding, using microscopic photography and sound to explore the area. We will be exhibiting the work made in 2023 at SPACE Studios.
Arup is a British multinational professional services firm headquartered in London which provides design, engineering, architecture, planning, and advisory services across every aspect of the built environment.
SPACE is a leading visual arts organisation supporting artists by providing creative workspace, advocacy and professional development.
The River Roding Trust is as a community-led effort to restore the River Roding, with particular focus on the lower reaches around Barking and Ilford. The objects of the River Roding Trust are as follows:
'To preserve, protect and restore the River Roding for the public benefit and to undertake and carry on projects and activities of a charitable nature related to the river which will assist in promoting recreation, protecting the environment and educating the public about the history of the river.'
Dark Skies Conversations with Marnie Ogg
I was really thrilled to be invited to be on Marnie Ogg’s podcast, Dark Sky Conversations earlier this year. Marnie is the Director of Dark Sky Traveller in Australia. We recorded the podcast earlier in the summer and am very excited that it is now online.
During the podcast we talked about my relationship with the night sky, my Dad's influence and my practice.
‘Something special with this episode…an invitation to listen to and experience the work of Louise Beer, Artist and Curator. Louise has kindly shared her original performance piece titled ‘In Memory of Darkness’. So stick around at the end of the interview, make sure you’re listening on headphones and immerse yourself.
Marnie Ogg talks with some of the brightest minds about light pollution and ways to protect our night skies.’
Listen here for free:
https://www.darkskytraveller.com.au/podcast
Earth as a Planetary Landscape/ Apogee Earth
Photofringe Eco Outdoor Exhibition 2022
My image, Earth as a Planetary Landscape/ Apogee Earth was one of twenty images selected for the Photo Fringe 2022 OPEN Eco exhibition to be installed in an outdoor exhibition on Worthing beach in October. The exhibition will remain in place for six months.
This image was developed during my Amant Foundation Siena residency in Chiusure, Italy last year and with my DYCP grant from Arts Council England.
'Photo Fringe invited artists to propose a single image to engage audiences and help us imagine a greener, fairer world. Artists were asked to respond to the question “How can photography make a difference to the climate crisis?"
From 6 October, the twenty images will also feature on the Photo Fringe 2022 festival website where many of the selected artists have created additional online exhibitions. The selection panel for the Photo Fringe OPEN Eco was Steve Macleod director of Metro Imaging; Elizabeth Grieve from Land Art Agency and artist Emma Critchley.
Photo Fringe 2022, the tenth edition of the biennial, open-platform photography festival presents a vibrant mix of self-curated shows and work selected from open calls online and in galleries, cafés, pop-up venues, outdoor installations and other extraordinary spaces.
The selected artists are:
Rhiannon Adam, Louise Beer, Laurene Bois-Mariage, Anne Marie Briscombe, Bill Brooks, Chan Hong Yui Clement, Alex Currie, Sarah Grounds, Gwen Riley Jones, Frankie Knight, Olana Light, Mark O'Halleron, Eunice Pais, Alex Robertson, Grant Simon Rogers, Francesco Russo, Scott Stevens, John Walmsley, Mandy Williams and Elizabeth Woodger.
Photo Fringe 2022 OPEN Eco is sponsored by Metro Imaging with funding from Arts Council England National Lottery Project Fund and Worthing Borough Council.
super/collider/ Exhibition: The lives held in these arms
The lives held in these arms
4m34s
I made this film for the super/collider exhibition at Grizedale Arts Centre which is open from this Sunday. This work was inspired by reflections from the participants during our listening activities throughout the forest.
The film opens a window into an immersive forest world with a soundscape created from recordings using different microphones. Many of the trees in Grizedale Forest feel ancient and as if they have watched the landscape change around them. As I listened through microphones, I thought about how many creatures one tree supports through its lifetime, including our species.
During our commission, super/collider visited the forest with local participants from Barrow in Furness. We explored the different histories of Grizedale Forest and how it is being managed in the face of the climate crisis, with a series of visits between May and August 2022.
This work accompanies a collaborative Polaroid artwork, exhibition at Grizedale Visitor Centre and risograph zine - all co-created by local participants and super/collider.
The project, Curating Climate, was commissioned by Hazel Stone at Grizedale Forest Signal Film and Media and is a collaboration between myself and Melanie King. The show runs from Sunday until 30 October.
Ōtehīwai Mt. John Observatory, Aotearoa New Zealand
Late last year I was included on a Rubin Observatory (Chile) grant as a co-investigator to research the feasibility of creating an artists residency at University of Canterbury Ōtehīwai Mt. John Observatory in Takapō, Aotearoa New Zealand. This project is in collaboration with planetary astronomer Dr Michele Bannister and Dark Sky Project and includes the development of resources to incorporate Māori astronomical science into a first-year undergraduate astronomy course.
After the Pale Blue Dot Collective residency in the Blue Mountains, Australia, we headed to the South Island of Aotearoa to start my research trip at the university and at Mount John Observatory. We stayed at the observatory for about a week and it was incredible. After not being sure if we would be able to get through on the roads, we arrived to find Takapō completely covered in snow. The observatory sits at 1029m above an electric blue glacial lake.
We had a real adventure exploring the observatory and landscape around it, located in the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, the largest gold standard International Dark Sky Reserve in the world. Around every corner was a view more beautiful than the last. The constantly changing weather brought snow storms, strong winds and extensive and severe flooding across the South Island. At night time, the snow covered landscape gave way to some of the most beautiful skies I have ever seen.
For the past six months I have been interviewing artists about their experiences of observatory based residencies. If you would like to share any feedback you have - please send me a message and we can arrange a time to chat.
Art + Air Exhibition
Since early 2022 I have been working on a project for Art + Air, and exhibition of collaborative artworks by artists and scientists presented at the Dunedin Community Gallery in Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand.
My piece ‘Revolving through the Megacosm’ will be displayed at this gallery, and also at the Gigacube at the Dunedin Public Library.
I worked with scientist Geoff Wyvil on this piece which you can watch here. The publication is also digitally available on the same page.
Pale Blue Dot Collective/ Last verse
I am really pleased to share the film made by John Hooper and myself during our BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency 2022. You can watch the film here.
Last verse is a dual screen film made using footage and sound recorded in and around BigCi and up to Blackheath in the Blue Mountains of Australia. The film depicts two temporalities. Firstly from the perspective of a non-human animal and secondly, a cosmic time frame.
Are we cosmically insignificant, or cosmically significant?
As we zoom out further, we might think that nothing we do matters, eventually Earth will be absorbed into the sun, and no trace of our world will exist. But what about the fact that there is no other world just like ours, no other world with kangaroos, skinks or gang-gang cockatoos. It has taken our world 13.7 billion years of the universe existing, beginning with an extraordinary start, billions of years of star formation, the gathering dust, the cooling of our rocky world and the formation of our oceans and atmosphere to develop into our home. All of these processes have helped the eucalyptus trees to grow into homes for insects, animals and birds, have helped the pergolas to form, have helped our brains to develop in such a way that we can look out at the pinpricks of light in the sky and through research, understand that they are unfathomably old and unfathomably large spheres of gas.
It took a vast period of time for our universe to form into the one we see around us. After Earth is gone, time will exist for an immeasurable period, with life unlikely anywhere in the cosmos.
Pale Blue Dot Collective/ Artists Talk
During our BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency, we recorded an artists talk which explores both of our practices and our new project, Last verse.
Watch the talk below.
BigCi environmental art award residency initial reflections
From mid June until mid July John Hooper and I were doing our BigCi Environmental Art Award at BigCi in the Blue Mountains in Australia. It was one of the most important things I have ever done. The mental processing of experiencing a forest so damaged by wildfires was significant. Noticing the missing bird populations was a sobering experience.
After the first two weeks of blue skies and clear nights, the rain started to pour torrentially and didn’t stop for over a week. This rain saturated the ground, flooded rivers and homes and other buildings around the area. We were lucky to not have water in our accommodation, but many local bridges were closed for days as the water and trees rushed over them, causing chaos as it went. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories of the local people on the news saying that this was the third or forth flood within a year to destroy the ground floor of their homes. My thoughts also went to the flora and fauna of the forest, who had somehow come back after the fires, to face the flooding rain.
I am still processing what a confronting experience it was - I feel completely changed by it. I am so incredibly grateful to Rae and Yuri Bolotin of BigCi for offering us this unique experience, an opportunity to see with our own eyes what these impacts of the climate crisis look like. The work they do through this residency must have a massive, global impact.
John and I have made a film which we will be sharing soon. I will also be sharing more images and experiences from the residency over the next couple of months via social media.
Photo by John Hooper.
Pale Blue Dot Collective/ BigCi Residency, Blue Mountains, Australia
We are very pleased to share that we will be in residence at BigCi Australia for our postponed BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency 2020, from mid June to mid July this year. We will be based in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.
During our residency, we will be exploring the environmental challenges that the Wollemi National Park has faced and will face in the future. This award offers an opportunity to share the complexity of the irreplaceable ecosystem of the National Park, utilising the expert knowledge of BigCi and to draw attention to the fragility of this rich and diverse ecosystem by employing a cosmic perspective.
From a distance, we have been overwhelmed by the recent ecological crises in Australia and will create an immersive sound and visual experience that invites international audiences to create a meaningful connection to the individual life forms that dwell in the Wollemi National Park. Through video, photography and sound recording, we will create a time capsule of a moment in history that seems to be a tipping point in the human created deterioration of millions of years of successful evolution.
We will photograph and film the night sky, the flora and fauna and landscapes. Using field recordings, we will create a complex narrative sound piece that echoes the sounds of the Blue Mountains. Through presenting the area with a deep time perspective, we will invite viewers to consider the incomprehensible value of the ecosystems of fire and flood endangered areas of Australia.
BigCi - Bilpin international ground for Creative initiatives
‘BigCi is an independent, artist run, not for profit artist residency program focusing on artists’ professional development and facilitating their projects.
BigCi has been established and run by Rae Bolotin, a practicing artist, and Yuri Bolotin, environmentalist and wilderness explorer.
Because of our location on the edge of Wollemi National Park within the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains and the knowledge base of our team, many of our resident artists are particularly interested in projects that explore environmental or ecological issues, although many others use our beautiful natural surroundings as a source of creativity for a variety of different artistic pursuits.
All residents have opportunities to take part in bush walks conducted by Yuri Bolotin, an experienced mountain guide and author, and to learn first hand about the unique natural environment of the area.
Artists-in-residence are able to present their work during a BigCi Open Day that usually takes place at the end of their stay.’
*We are conscious of the air travel to do this project and have considered it a lot. We believe that the work that we produce during the Australian residency will be disseminated to a wide audience in the UK/ internationally, and will help to highlight the climate events that are happening in the Blue Mountains, from our own perspective, living on an island with differing environmental issues.
Images are from Google Earth of Blue Mountains, Australia.
Film still, Under the Fading Light
Pale Blue Dot Collective/ Visual Research Centre Presents Encounters with the Urban Night Conference
Pale Blue Dot Collective will display the film Under the Fading Light at the Encounters with the Urban Night Conference at the National Museum of Estonia in Tartu, Estonia, followed by a Q&A.
he two-day conference is hosted by the Estonian National Museum and open to the public. The conference is organised around a combined schedule of panels and screenings to stimulate discussions which engage with the themes of alterity, identity, transformation and sensoriality in the context of the nocturnal. The conference will expand upon the residency theme by exploring further the many ways of encountering, perceiving, representing and reformulating the alterity and threshold-crossing character of the dark hours, as well as the special identity-giving forces and phenomenological elements of alterity within the urban environment, as conceived by an array of researchers and creative practitioners.
More info here.
Grand Union x UoB MA Art History & Curating Students/ The Age of Dreamers is Over
PV 3 June 2022
Exhibition Open 3 June – 25 June 2022
I am really pleased to share that my piece ‘A Memory of Darkness’ will be displayed as part of The Age of Dreamers is Over as an installation.
In collaboration with Grand Union, the MA Art History and Curating course at University of Birmingham presents The Age of Dreamers is Over: a group show navigating the historical scales of anthropogenic* rupture, as well as the potential for collective healing.
This immersive exhibition brings together interactive sculpture, sound, and light works from artists Louise Beer, Jack Lewdjaw, and Mina Heydari-Waite. Unified by the idea of the night and darkness as a site of creative energy and potential growth, the three artists included in this exhibition have examined forms of rupture from the climate crisis; to revolution and colonialism; to the decay of the English high street. Reflecting upon the notion of ruination and rebuilding, The Age of Dreamers is Over serves to explore the impact of human hands on one another and on the very world we live in – if we have the capacity to destroy then we can also attempt to mend and create.
*Anthropogenic: originating in human activity.
Grand Union
19 Minerva Works
Fazeley Street
Birmingham
B5 5RS
Read more about the exhibition here.
super/collider/ Curating Climate Commission
super/collider has been commissioned by Signal Film and Media and Grizedale Forest for their Arts Council England funded Curating Climate Project, in the Lake District.
The project includes working with a group of participants to explore their experiences of forest spaces as well as researching the different histories of Grizedale Forest and how it is being managed in the face of the climate crisis. We will be taking several trips to the Forest to work with the participants, with the resulting artworks being exhibited later in the summer at Grizedale Forest.
Eternally spinning through darkness’
Arts Council England/ Developing Your Creative Practice Grant
I have recently completed my Arts Council England DYCP grant which I was awarded in December 2020. When I applied I had no idea just how transformative it could or would be. It has allowed me the time and space to consider lots of parts of my practice, to refine my processes and ideas, and to review where my focus lies. My grant enabled me to develop my photographic and installation work, creating two new processes within my practice. I have been challenged and supported by my two amazing mentors, Ellen Mara De Wachter and Amy Budd.
My grant didn't happen in isolation of course. I was able to go on several incredible residencies including Amant Siena, North York Moors National Park Trust Dark Skies Residency and to begin my on going CreaTures Art/ Tech/ Nature/ Culture Residency as well as working on different commissions which all fed into this development. I shall be forever grateful to Arts Council England for this grant and to the Delfina Foundation for introducing me to my mentors.
This image titled ‘Eternally spinning through darkness’ of my series 'Earth as a Planetary Landscape' which was developed during my Amant Siena Residency and with the guidance of my DYCP mentors.
Yorkshire Life/ The Glory of the Night Skies
Journalist Amanda Brown interviewed me about my solo exhibition Dark Reflections, which is open until 03 April. In the interview, I discussed where my interest in the night sky began and what inspired the works in my exhibition.
