Is there anybody out there? | | 19 April—10 May 2008 |
including:
Zafer & Barbara Baran
Shane Bradford
Michael Buhler
James Burbidge
John Randolph Carter
Sylvie Fleury |
| Ken Grimes
Tina Keane
James Lancaster
Martyn Last
Jonathan Parsons
Ionel Talpazan
Jason Wallis-Johnson |
The idea of life ‘out there’ has entered our
collective imagination as a form of modern mythology. The related
phenomena of visitors from outer space, alien beings,
extra-terrestrials, UFOs and flying saucers, sightings and abductions
have all provided inspiration and subject matter for late 20th century
and contemporary visual art, cinema and literature. This exhibition
examines aspects of belief, delusion, irony and fantasy around the
subject of extra-terrestrial life.
Contact with
extra-terrestrial beings has been a source of fascination throughout
history. ‘Alien’ manifestations in art include UFO-like objects and
‘spacemen’ speculatively identified in ancient cave paintings and rock
art on various continents, and the strange objects and apparitions that
have repeatedly appeared in religious paintings since Byzantine times.
In
1938, Orson Welles, radio broadcast of H.G.Wells’ novel The War of the
Worlds convinced many terrified listeners of a Martian invasion, but it
was not until 1947 that the UFO/‘flying saucer’ entered modern
mythology when a pilot described seeing ‘objects flying like saucers’
above the mountains of Washington State. By the 1950s, flying saucers
appeared throughout popular culture. The writings of Carl Jung and Erich
Von Daniken added momentum in the 1970s, and by the end of the 1990s,
interest in alien life peaked with millennium predictions.
Artists
have various perspectives on the concept of alien influence: Ken Grimes
is an American artist who paints signs and symbols of UFOs, crop
circles and alien figures. His art and writings document his extensive
study and quest on the margins of scientific research. A singularly
obsessive artist is Ionel Talpazan, a Romanian-born artist who lives in
New York, and has produced drawings, paintings and sculpture of flying
saucers for over thirty years. He traces his interest in UFOs to an
encounter as a boy in rural Romania, and his annotated drawings are
diagrams of ‘advanced saucer propulsion systems’. Committed UFO artists
often focus on universal, almost religious concerns – some such as
Grimes, see meaningful coincidences or potential salvation offered by
extraterrestrials who will bring wisdom and progress to earth. It is an
alternative belief system of alien abductions, government-sponsored
conspiracies and messages from ‘out there’.
A more playful and
subversive approach is taken by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury with her
image of a golden Raygun – she says she likes the idea of life on
other planets, ‘in the sense that it recalibrates our own perception of
ourselves’. Zafer & Barbara Baran’s photographic images reflect
their interest in astronomy, and a shimmering blue disc evokes a
mysterious presence in the blackness of space. Dutch artist Martyn
Last’s small bronzes are the compressed debris of our civilization left
behind after The War of the Worlds.
Jason Wallis-Johnson has
made a sinister silicone sculpture – an alien mutant that quivers and
gleams ominously; Shane Bradford’s Moth is a wall installation ‘dart’
painting of dipped objects which won the Celeste Art prize in 2007.
Michael Buhler has been intrigued by UFOs since the 1960s, when he
began a series of drawings of alien encounters and abductions. He has
since developed a series of white boxed constructions with UFOs
hovering serenely above ‘our’ world. James Burbidge has made a group of
enigmatic sculptures from ‘a world of unnamed objects and things, whose
function is yet to be discovered’. James Lancaster’s small, intense
drawings depict chimera hovering in luminous space. Tina Keane once
stated that ‘art for me is about defining many different forms of
reality’, and her mysterious, poetic film from 1996, Beyond the Blue
Grain will be on view in the lower gallery.
England & Co 2008
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Installation: works by Bradford, Baran & Burbidge
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Sylvie Fleury
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Jason Wallis-Johnson
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Michael Buhler
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Ionel Talpazan
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Jonathan Parsons
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Tina Keane
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Ken Grimes
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