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Portfolio

Biography

Louise lived in Aotearoa New Zealand until 2002 before moving to the UK. Louise now works between London, Margate and Aotearoa New Zealand.

She uses installation, moving image, photography and sound to explore humanity's evolving understanding of Earth’s environments and the cosmos. She creates objects and experiences that reflect the incomprehensible nature of reality, from the ocean floor to the night sky. Louise’s experience of living under two types of night sky, the first in low level light polluted areas in Aotearoa, and the second in higher light polluted cities in the UK, has deeply informed her practice. 

She has been selected for Somewhere Nowhere Residency, Lake District (2019), Arts Centre Christchurch Te Matatiki Toi Ora Residency, Aotearoa New Zealand (2020), Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics Space Art Summer School (2020), Delfina x Gaia Art Foundation Science Technology Society UK Associateship (2020), SECCADs Grant (2020), BigCi Environmental Art Award (2020), ACE DYCP Grant (2021), North York Moors Dark Skies Residency with solo exhibition (2021), Amant Siena Residency (2021), CreaTures Art/ Tech/ Nature/ Culture Residency (2021), Grand Union x University of Birmingham MA Art History and Curating Exhibition Award (2022), British Council Pakistan - UK New Perspectives (2022), Space Studios x ARUP Commission (2022), Art + Air Exhibition Commission (2022), Curating Climate Commission Forestry England x Signal Film and Media (2022) and the Jean Harrison Commission (2022). Louise has recently been selected for the Photo Fringe 2022 OPEN Eco in Worthing, England and commissioned to create an installation in Derby Cathedral for FORMAT23 Photography Festival. She is currently a co-investigator on a Vera C. Rubin Observatory Kickstarter Grant at the University of Canterbury Ōtehīwai Mount John Observatory, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Louise has a strong collaborative practice as a director of Lumen, super/collider and Pale Blue Dot Collective. She has co-created 8 residencies in the UK and Europe and co-curated over 80 exhibitions and 80 events focusing on astronomy and/or ecology. She has collaborated with and curated events at organisations such as the Science Museum, Bompas and Parr, Greenman Festival, British Science Association, Second Home, the Ace Hotel, Floating Cinema, The Collective, Tate Britain, SALT Festival Norway, Soho House Group, Nablus Festival Israel, Blue Dot Festival, Young and Serious and Vivid Projects, Hebrides Dark Sky Festival and the Turner Contemporary.

ART WORK

Revolving through the Megacosm

5m41s
2022

This was a collaboration between myself and scientist Geoff Wyvil for the Art + Air project, curated by Pam McKinlay in collaboration with University of Otago, NIWA and the Dunedin School of Art, Aotearoa New Zealand.

This project has challenged me to think more about our atmosphere itself, rather than its transparency. Air tides are something that I hadn’t explored before, and learning about them from Geoff inspired me to think about the atmosphere being pushed and pulled as it travels around the solar system with our planet and as the solar system spirals around the Milky Way. All of the forces at play on our planet have created a semblance of balance over billions of years and this thin blue line is all that exists between us and the brutality of the vacuum of space. This cosmic wisp of gases makes our world a garden of life, instead of an inhospitable, dangerous place impacted by solar radiation, cosmic radiation, massive temperature fluctuations and meteorites. 

Our ever evolving blue marble has travelled around the Milky Way 18 times since its formation 4.5 billion years ago, whilst these earthly weather systems, influenced by our star, our satellite and our neighbouring planets have carved and shaped our world and everything that lives within it.

Read more here.

Earth as a Planetary Landscape

This work was created during the Amant Siena Residency 2021.

I am interested in how we can think about the environments we know as planetary landscapes, that have risen and fallen over billions of years. Thinking about all the sunsets and sunrises that amounts to, where the geology beneath the stratosphere is changing and life alongside it. Without all of these developments, we would not have the same landscapes and forms of life that we recognise today. If we think about the formation of this landscape against the backdrop of the galaxy and universe, how does it challenge our thinking about the cosmic importance of the lifeforms and environments that we live amongst? How does it reframe our thinking about the insects that move over and in the sediment, and their origins? Does it challenge our human-centric view of the world?

The images below are created using collages of sunsets, sunrises, moonlit landscapes and night sky photographs taken in and around the calanco badlands of Chiusure, Italy during my Amant Siena Residency.

Read more here.

The lives held in these arms

4m34s
2022
Commissioner: Forestry England and Signal Film and Media for a super/collider project titled Curating Climate.

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.

Read more here.

A Memory of Darkness

This piece was developed for headphones.

I spent my residency at the Delfina Foundation x Gaia Art Foundation expanding my research into the environmental and philosophical impacts of light pollution, and our disappearing access to natural darkness. I spoke to many scientists, artists and writers about these subjects during this period.

As part of the science_technology_society programme, I created an online listening event called A Memory of Darkness. Audience members were invited to sign up to the event using their address, and were posted a print of my image with instructions on how to access the secret link, and an eye mask to wear during the event. Over 100 people joined from all over the world during the event, and many submitted a response to my submission form about their experience of the night sky after the event.

Each attendee received a professionally printed photograph of the night sky that I took at Hinewai Reserve, Aotearoa New Zealand, where I recorded the sound used to make the piece. The parcel included instructions on how to join the event and an eye mask. The mask deprived the listener of their vision and heightened their auditory awareness. The piece depicted my experience of witnessing a phenomenal dark sky, and the feelings of wonderment and environmental grief that followed. The audience members completed a questionnaire about their experience of the night sky afterwards.

Event Description
’As the sun sets over the enormous volcanic landscape of the remote Hinewai Reserve in Aotearoa New Zealand, the sky begins to reveal an infinite display of stars and planets, appearing like heavy lights against a pitch-black sky.

As a result of light pollution, many of us across the globe have lost our night-time view of the Milky Way, which can have a philosophical impact on the way we see our ecosystems. When we can no longer look outwards and see our galaxy, we lose a sense of the scale of the emptiness, the expanse of the darkness, and by contrast, the sheer magnificence and fragility of our natural world.

The short live broadcast, A Memory of Darkness, comprises a sonic piece created using field recordings of bird song from Louise’s recent experience at Hinewai Reserve, in her native Aotearoa New Zealand. Alone, looking outwards over the Pacific Ocean, as the warm breeze rustled the native trees nearby and the Rurus (Morepork owls) sang out into the night, the artist experienced overwhelming feelings of both wonderment and environmental grief in equal measure.

The artist invites participants from across the world – who will receive instructions by post – to join her to collectively listen to this new sound piece and recall our own memory of the darkness, considering its significance. The field recordings in this piece were made during Louise’s recent residency at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora.’

CURATORIAL

Ōtehīwai Mount John Observatory, Aotearoa New Zealand

I am currently a co-investigator on a Rubin Observatory (Chile) Kickstarter Grant to create 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.

The residency will offer an opportunity for artists and scientists to engage in a two way knowledge sharing exchange, exploring each other's research methodologies. The residency will be designed around the artist's specific research interests, providing them with a unique opportunity to access specialist knowledge of Māori astronomy, Western astronomy and other sciences of interest whilst under some of the darkest skies in the world. Providing artists with this rare access to astronomers and internationally significant telescopes will present them with tools to develop new ways of understanding our place within the universe, under the phenomenal nocturnal landscapes of Ōtehīwai, Takapō, Aotearoa. This remarkable opportunity will help to facilitate work that is of interest to galleries, museums, curators, artists and audiences across the world.  

The observatory sits at 1029m above an electric blue glacial lake, located in the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, the largest gold standard International Dark Sky Reserve in the world.