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Dan Holdsworth: At the Edge of Space, Parts 1–3
This exhibition has now closed.
Exhibition dates: 8 June 2006–21 January 2007
Location: level 3, Neptune Court
Dan Holdsworth's large-scale photographs explore the limits of perception and the possibilities of photography. The exhibition – 'At the Edge of Space, Parts 1–3' – focuses on the artist's interest in communicating the invisible realms of time and space, featuring work from the series At the Edge of Space (1999) and The Gregorian (2005), alongside the new commission Hyperborea (2006).
At the Edge of Space is a series of photographs taken at the European Space Agency’s spaceport at Kourou in Guiana, South America. The site is surrounded by verdant equatorial forest and its position in relation to the Earth’s rotation is ideal for space missions. From here Ariane research rockets are launched as well as commercial satellites and in 2011 the Aurora Exploration Programme to Mars will send the first robotic explorer to the planet.
The Gregorian was developed at the Arecibo Space Telescope at the American National Astronomy and Ionosphere Centre, Puerto Rico. Nestled in a jungle landscape of collapsed cave systems, this man-made structure is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope and is capable of picking up the faintest radio waves from the edges of space. Here pulses are recorded that have taken some 100 million years to reach the Earth from the furthest reaches of the universe. The signals are then translated into visible information that can be interpreted to reveal the formation of new planets, track asteroids and describe the edge of known space.
Hyperborea is a series of landscapes, commissioned by the Museum, showing the Aurora (the Northern Lights) from the city limits of Reykjavik in Iceland and from the Andoya Rocket Range above the Arctic Circle in Norway. The Aurora are colourful displays caused by the interaction of charged particles from the solar wind with the Earth’s atmosphere.
Speaking of this new work, Dan Holdsworth describes how:
the experience of photographing the Northern Lights felt like I was entering a different time space. Whilst being alone in the arctic wilderness, I became aware of the cycle of the Earth. The lights are a visual representation of everything that we cannot see but which goes on around us all the time. It’s like being given a glimpse of the rhythm of the universe.
This exhibition is a part of New Visions, the Museum's ongoing series of contemporary art displays and commissions exploring the importance of the sea, ships, time and the stars, and their relationship with people.
For further information contact newvisions@nmm.ac.uk
