Louise Beer

These images are from the Somewhere Nowhere Residency in the Lake District in September 2019.

My favourite memory of this residency happened on one evening after most of the other residents had gone to bed. I was out in the near pitch black air, taking photographs of the starry skies and waiting for the moon to rise. It was very difficult to see anything at ground level apart from some hints of shapes towards the few unnatural light sources towards the nearby barn. It was very cold and was so quiet that I was conscious of the lack of noise. Directly ahead of me was a gate that led to some fields that led to the Duddon River. I was focusing on trying to capture the hills in the foreground in my images in order to bring the age of Earth into the picture as well as the incomprehensible age and distance of the stars. I heard a loud, very close noise and felt extremely vulnerable. My sight was completely useless in this level of light. The noise eventually stopped and I persevered, still feeling very exposed. As the moon slowly rose in the sky, I began to see that a small group of Herdwick sheep had joined me in my contemplation of the night sky, just on the other side of the gate. I continued to take photos and they continued to share their view with me.

As I looked into the cold, unsympathetic night and distant starlight - I welcomed the company of the creatures around me. Instead of looking into the abyss on my own, I was surrounded by the warmth and familiarity of these trusting animals. I stood there, looking into the vastness of space, the unknown, the cosmos, and thought about the ground I was standing on, that is home to an oasis of life in every corner. I thought about what a privilege it felt to share a space with these creatures. I felt an insurmountable amount of shame about how we are destroying their environment globally.

These images endeavour to capture a memory of a night sky; the glimpses of shapes in the distance or the after image of a bright moon against the dark sky. As we cut ourselves off from natural darkness and the wonder and power of a view of a night sky full of stars, we are completely reshaping the environment for other species too.

This piece was created for the Lumen Residency Exhibition in Atina, 2018. It is a site specific installation, drawing on the connotations of the work not only being within a church, but also in a confession box.

The glowing, other worldly light is emitted from the front of a sculpture that references the bibles used in Catholic services. The black cloth references the infinite darkness of space, and our infancy in knowledge of it. It is a piece about worshiping the nature of the universe, as we progress out of an age of religion, and are able to face the unknown without the comfort of faith.

Listen to the piece here.

Made in collaboration with John Hooper under our collective title, Pale Blue Dot Collective.

The geology of the Lake District has changed monumentally over the past 500 million years. The southern third of the Lake District is made up of rocks such as slate, siltstone and sandstone, which were formed at the bottom of tropical seas ~420 million years ago. The landscape of the Lake District has gone through periods of being dominated by volcanic activity, limestone, sandstones and the Ice Ages.

The abundance of nature in Grizedale Forest led me to think about the formation of life on Earth, which some scientists believe happened within tidal areas 4 billion years ago. At this time, the moon orbited much closer to Earth than it does now which caused huge tides to ebb and flow every few hours.

These tides caused variations in the salinity in coastal areas which may have driven the evolution of early DNA biomolecules. The sounds of the tide, captured on the current British coastline, were recorded in response to my stay in Grizedale. The recording has been slowed down to correspond to the time before Grizedale existed and the area which was to become the Lake District, was under tropical sea.

Bringing the sound of the sea back to Grizedale is an attempt to bring a cosmic perspective to viewing the landscape. Through the ever increasing loss of starlight and dark skies, we are losing our relationship with the universe, and forgetting our place within it. This piece is an attempt to bring focus to the long evolutionary journey of all the local flora and fauna, and the cosmic importance of each strand of life that exists on Earth, in contrast to the darkness of space.

This piece uses scale to describe the unknowingness of our universe. We are still in our infancy of knowledge.

This piece was made in collaboration with the Oxford MRC Neuropharmacology lab at the University of Oxford.

To create this piece, I used fluorescently labelled brain sections prepared by Kouichi Nakamura. Kouichi’s research is on the thalamus, which is a key brain region involved in sensory perception and regulation of motor function. On these slides, a series of molecular markers had been used in a process called immunofluorescence to illustrate different (neuro)chemical architectures between thalamic nuclei to try and understand their function.

Throughout the collaboration, I took a series of microscopic photographs of different areas of the tissue sample to provide an optical illusion of a mythical location in space. The lenses of the microscope reflected humanities progress in the pursuit of unpicking the mysteries of the universe, micro and macro, but also highlighted the deterioration and destruction that we are inflicting on the only world we know of that harbours life in the enormous, expansive cosmos. 

You can read more about this process here and here. 

Through haunting sound and a kinetic light and shadow display, this piece endeavours to question the many theories around the formation of our endless universe. This piece was my response to the Lumen Atina Residency, 2017. It is created out of a found sphere, simple lights and reflective materials within a kinetic installation inside the sphere.

'... Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.'

Matthew 24:29

This piece was created for the Empty Vessels exhibition at Bankley Gallery, Manchester. The exhibition was curated by Scaffold Gallery.

This piece was made in collaboration with John Hooper.

The film visualises a segment of an interstellar object’s journey through the vastness of space. The ambiguity of the rocks purpose is key. Does the object carry life, with the capacity to take it from one place to another? Does the rock continue on an endless journey, never making contact with any other surface, until the end of the universe? Will any life form ever witness the rocks journey?

This piece was created in collaboration with John Hooper.

The piece is a response to ever increasing air and light pollution that we now see the wondrous universe through. Through the loss of natural darkness and natural starlight we are becoming more insular as societies, more destructive and less cosmically minded. We are losing access to the huge questions we face as a sentient species, with untold consequences.

The other side of the story is of course, the unforgivable impact humanity’s actions are having on all flora and fauna and the change we are inflicting on this planet, that can never be undone.

Over the course of an exhibition, the light slowly fades until it is no longer visible.

‘..humankind has always observed the sky either to interpret it or to understand the physical laws that govern the universe, and that this interest in astronomy has had profound implications for science, philosophy, culture, and our general conception of the universe..’

Declaration in Defence of the Night Sky and the Right to Starlight (La Palma Declaration), 2007.

In collaboration with John Hooper.

This piece emanates a deep, unsympathetic sound from a distant place. It is an imposing black structure, theatrically lit from above.

Upon looking inside the viewing hole, the viewer finds a spinning, changing sphere that could be the giver of life, or that which takes it away.

The piece intends to highlight the cosmic importance of all life and environments on Earth.

This piece is a ‘light drawing’ created by moving the camera across a very large static light installation that I had created.

A 13.7~ billion year journey has lead us to this moment. We are still in our infancy of knowledge about the nature of existence.

Seeing ourselves reflected in the sublime.

This is a photograph of a light installation.

Commissioned by the British Library.

The British Library is home to one of the largest collections of recorded knowledge in the world. It is a mirror to our pursuit of understanding ourselves and our environment. Throughout history we have developed methods of recording information, from survival techniques right through to unravelling the complexities of our universe. With the inevitable fate of our planet, all of this knowledge and progress will disintegrate and cease to exist in any form. My question is, is this a cyclical event that has happened an infinite number of times before, and will it happen an infinite number of times in the future?

This was a collaboration between Oxford MRC Neuropharmocology lab and myself.

I used epifluorescent microscopic photographs of a rat brain as a starting point, to provide an optical illusion of a mythical location in space. This is my vision of the edge of the universe.