Research Networks and Workshops (LE)
Nicholas Alfrey
Timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the first landing of men on the moon, a new exhibition, Earth-Moon-Earth, brings together the work of two artists who have addressed the idea of the connection between earth and space. AHRC research underpins the exhibition, which sets up a dialogue between a key work made in 1969 by David Lamelas, a pioneering figure in conceptual art, and an installation by Katie Paterson, one of the most exciting artists to have emerged in recent years.
The exhibition starts from the idea that the moon landings formed a significant historical context for land art. Lamelas’s film A Study of the Relationship Between Inner and Outer Space was originally made for the
exhibition Environments Reversal at the Camden Arts Centre, shown during the run-up to the moon landing, and captures anticipations of the impending event. Paterson, who has made work on themes such as the sound of melting glaciers and the simulation of moonlight, combines conceptual art, technology and the sublime in her work. Earth-Moon Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) takes an oblique and poetic approach to the moon and its place in the western imagination.
Looking back at this historically significant time it can be seen that a new kind of landscape art emerged in the Britain and elsewhere in the late 1960s and 1970s. New questions about the significance of landscape as a genre began to be addressed by art historians and curators in this period as people engaged with a sense of a suddenly expanded world. The research network has explored the question of how and why landscape came to be the focus of new practices and thinking in the visual arts in this period, and brings together art historians, museum and gallery curators, artists and critics from a wide range of organisations concerned with the visual arts.
Earth-Moon-Earth is an important outcome of the AHRC funded Research Networks and workshops project 'Land Art and the Culture of Landscape, 1967-1977.' The three main partners in the project are the University of Nottingham, the Slade School of Fine Art and Tate, the network also includes other participants including the Henry Moore institute and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, as well people from galleries in the private sector and independent critics and writers. Many of the organisations involved in the network have their own gallery spaces and exhibition programmes, and one outcome of the project has been the preparation of proposals for exhibitions and displays. Earth-Moon-Earth, currently at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham, is the first of these exhibitions.
Notes
Details of the exhibition can be found on the Lakeside Arts website. The exhibiton was curated by Nicholas Alfrey and Joy Sleeman (Slade School of Fine Art).
More information on Nicholas Alfrey.
The 20th July 1969 was the day of the moon landing, as part of the anniversary 2009 has been designated as the Year of Astronomy for more information please see http://www.astronomy2009.co.uk/index.php/about-mainmenu-45
Images
Earth–Moon–Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon)2007. E.M.E transmitter/receiver, disklavier grand piano. Courtesy of the artist and Albion, London Photo: © 2007 Katie Paterson.Installation view, Slade School of Fine Art, 2007. Reproduction is with permission of the artist only.
Banner image © istockphoto.com/toth11