Sculptorvox and SVOX.TV

I am thrilled to share that I am now an Advisory Board Member of both SVOX.TV and Sculptorvox - two amazing projects by Daniel Hawley-Lingham.

SVOX.TV is a new online platform for sharing film and video art which already has an incredible collection to explore, alongside artist interviews.

Sculptorvox is a limited edition print run publication. The 8 volume series goes beyond seeing sculpture as 'object' and delves into the world, work, inspiration, processes, influences, ideas, journeys and careers of artists, writers, photographers who all work directly or indirectly with notions of three dimensions. The first three volumes can be found on the website, and are titled Geometry of Nothing, Blood & Wire and A God Complex The images in this post are from A God Complex.

I am really excited about the future of both projects.

Newsletter

Sign up to my new newsletter for updates about commissions, exhibitions, events, opportunities and print of the month!

You can sign up here.

super/collider: Energy Systems

super/collider co-directors Melanie King and Louise Beer have contributed to Energy Systems, a publication by Well Projects, Margate.

Across 150 monochromatic pages, Energy Systems explores the systems that dominate global infrastructure and the consequences of connectivism under late capitalism; probing correlations between the worldwide drive for connectivity and the emergence of severe environmental rifts.

Reflecting on recent ecological shifts at both local and global scales, Energy Systems explores the systems that dominate global infrastructure and the consequences of connectivism under late capitalism; probing correlations between the worldwide drive for connectivity and the emergence of severe environmental rifts.

Energy Systems seeks to find ways of replacing ‘network’ orientated capital accumulation and socio environmental exploitation with ‘metabolisms’ which are orientated toward reciprocal models of coexistence. Through newly commissioned and existing text works by 19 artists and academics, Energy Systems explores a new architecture of values and begins to build stepping stones toward addressing the systemic alienation of the environment.

Energy Systems is released as part of Well Project’s 2020 exhibition programme of the same name. You can find more information on the Well Projects website.

Energy Systems features contributions from Verity Birt, Dimitrios Bormpoudakis, Louise Beer, Milo Creese, Joachim Coucke, Kyriaki Costa, Hector Campbell, Jack Clarke, Sophie Dyer, Sasha Englemann, Billy Fraser, Nicolette Clara Illes, Melanie King, Kris Lock, Ruth Pilston, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Tom Sewell, Sissel Marie Tonn & Rosie Grace Ward.

Pale Blue Dot Collective Residency at The Margate School

Pale Blue Dot Collective are pleased to share that we have been selected for the @themargateschool Art, Society, Nature: Photography Residency 2021. We will be working on our project titled 'Floating in Space'.

Pale Blue Dot Collective will create a series of images depicting how solitary beings are all connected, using images of under the water surface shot in Walpole Bay, and the night sky shot in Margate and Minster.

We will create a photographic folio that examines the parallels between floating in the ocean and Earth moving through our solar system. The work will be contemplative in nature, as we investigate the giant landscape of the sea-life and plant-life that lives in Walpole Bay, removing our human-centric scale, to the glittering dark skies of Margate. We will invite the viewer to imagine how we fit into our ecosystem, and how our ecosystem fits into the cosmos. This work will explore the fragile nature of our coastal area. For some, the virus has been an incredibly isolating experience. This work will show the connection between all of us, as we stand and gaze over the horizon, or towards our galaxy.

Alongside this photographic work, we will create a soundscape using a hydrophone to record the movement of the waves and sound recorders for life above the waterline. We will also record the movement of the trees that we view the stars through at our studio in Minster.

The residency will allow us to use the darkroom facilities at the Margate School for eight weeks. Read more about The Margate School here.

Pale Blue Dot Interview/ SVOX.TV

We are thrilled to share that Pale Blue Dot Collective has been interviewed on SVOX.TV, an amazing new platform for film and video arts.

Read the full interview here.

SVOX.TV is curated by Daniel Hawley-Lingham. Have a look around the wonderful collection of artists films!

Arts Council England/ Developing Your Creative Practice Award

I am thrilled to announce that I have been granted an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant for £8893.00.

This grant will transform my practice through mentoring from three esteemed mentors, including a curator. an art critic, and a photographer. This grant will allow me to have a focused period of six months in my studio where I will be creating large scale prints of installation work.

I will be sharing more news of this project in the coming weeks. Thank you Arts Council England!

New Print: A Memory of Darkness

I am delighted to share details of my new print, A Memory of Darkness, to celebrate my event of the same title and my UK Associateship at the Delfina Foundation x Gaia Art Foundation.

This print is an edition of 10 and is printed on Kodak Metallic paper. The visible night sky in this image was taken at Hinewai Reserve in Aotearoa New Zealand whilst I was on a Pale Blue Dot residency at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, Aotearoa New Zealand.

You can find out more here.

The Delfina Foundation + Gaia Art Foundation/ A Memory of Darkness

I am so pleased to announce the culmination of my experimentation and research as a UK associate artist at Delfina Foundation as part of the thematic programme science_technology_society, in partnership with Gaia Art Foundation.

Free tickets here

‘Join artist Louise Beer and participate in a live, collective listening and contemplation of the night sky and our connection to it.

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 at 19:00 GMT on 17 December 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.’

 To Book

To participate, please register, providing your postal address, on Eventbrite using the link below. You will then be sent a package by post containing instructions on how to listen to the 20 minute-live broadcast at 19:00GMT on Thursday 17 December 2020.

Due to the limited places available and the cost of postage, we ask you to refrain from signing up unless you are certain you will be able to attend the event.

There are a set number of places available for different postal zones. If you have any questions please email us at guestlist@delfinafoundation.com.

SVOX.TV / Under the Fading Light

Pale Blue Dot’s film Under the Fading Light has been featured on SVOX.TV, a new online gallery of artists films.

Watch it here.

Lumen/ Our Night Skies

A commission by Lumen Studios, funded by Arts Council England Coronavirus Emergency Grant. The film was edited by John Hooper.

Watch the film here.

Lumen Studios have commissioned artists from all over the globe to create a time-lapse of the night sky. Artists filmed a time lapse of the night sky safely from their back yard, garden or isolated park. Looking up at the sky is a shared experience, and is an act that connects us to our distant ancestors as they would have seen a similar view. Due to the constellations differing depending on our position in the Northern and Southern hemisphere, we see the night sky from slightly different angles. By combining the views of the stars together in one video, we get a feeling of the Earth spinning through space from a range of vantage points. As a result, the video seems both disorientating and dizzying. During these times of coronavirus, we may feel as though we are not able to explore the landscape as we usually would. Instead, we hope that viewers may be encouraged to explore the universe above their head from their immediate surroundings. There are many things to be seen by looking up, and it helps us to connect to others that may be enjoying the view at the same time.

Commissioned Artists

Aki Poon (Hong Kong)
Aleks Borys (Poland)
Andreas Olesen (Denmark)
Ashwin Ezhumalai (India)
Dorothy Cheung (Hong Kong)
Yukako Tanaka (Japan)
Esther Hanko (The Netherlands)
Elody Libe (Montreal)
Gil Zablodovsky (Tel Aviv)
Jaz Morrison (England)
Jenny Akerlund (Sweden)
Joe Patrick Shellard (Scotland)
Karolin Schwab (Germany)
Louise Beer (New Zealand)
Nenad Nedeljkov (Serbia)
Pauline Woolley (England)
Roman Gaditskiy (Russia)
Thomas Lord (New Zealand)

THE COMPLETE ENTANGLEMENT OF EVERYTHING /DUNEDIN SCHOOL OF ART, AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND/ Online Image Gallery and Catalogue

The online catalogue for the incredible exhibition, ‘The Complete Entanglement of Everything’ at Ōtepoti Dunedin School of Art, Aotearoa New Zealand, is now available online:

Exhibition Essay
Exhibition Catalogue
Exhibition Images

Image by Jodie Gibson.

Void Collective/ The New Black

Pale Blue Dot Collective (Louise Beer + John Hooper) have been included in the upcoming VOID Collective exhibition, The New Black.

We will be showing our film, Under the Fading Light.

“There is a thread that runs through the THE NEW BLACK, which has to do with what in a human life can be turned into a story, and what can’t. What is susceptible to some forms of symbolisation and narrativisation, and what isn’t? And what do people do with what can’t be taken up into a story? And what rules, methods, practices do people adopt to deal with those residues, those remainders?” Darian Leader

The exhibition will be available to view online via the Void Collective website from 27 October. With thanks to Jacob Weeks and Rachel Letchford for including our piece.

Artists of Meraki Feature

I am delighted to have had my work featured on the Artists of Meraki website. You can see the blog post here. Artists of Meraki is a new independent, artist-led contemporary arts publication, based in London and Milan.

The Complete Entanglement of Everything /Dunedin School of Art, Aotearoa New Zealand + New Print in Print Shop

Pale Blue Dot Collective are delighted to have been included in the exhibition ‘The Complete Entanglement of Everything’ at Dunedin School of Art, Aotearoa New Zealand, with a wonderful selection of artists.

This is very special for many reasons, but particularly because I lived in Dunedin until 2002.

‘The complete entanglement of everything is a reflection on how this changing environment
feels and is understood by artists, primarily from Ötepoti. Donna Haraway sees this period as the Chthulucene, thinking of underground spiders, and of underlying connections. She uses the term ‘entanglement’ to help us to imagine different futures, where species might have more to do with one another, and where new engagements might offer new moralities.The Anthropocene is irreversible but might be mitigated if we humans change the ways we generate and use energy, the waste we produce, and the ways we share resources. It is a time for a new approach to caring for the non-human world, and a time to draw on the Indigenous thinking that still places kaitiakitaka, care for the world’s resources, at the centre of cultural activity. It is a time for mourning, and a time to pay attention to the non-human entities both living and inorganic that have been ignored as being irrelevant to human flourishing, but on which we depend entirely.’

Read more about the exhibition here.

To celebrate our inclusion in the group show, we have created a print made using the original photographs used to create the film. The print signifies a moment where both the New Zealand and the UK night skies are visible.

The show runs from Monday, September 28, 2020 to Friday, October 2, 2020 and more information can be found here.

The exhibition accompanies the Mapping the Anthropocene in Ōtepoti/Dunedin Symposium.

The Delfina Foundation x Gaia Art Foundation/ UK Associateship

I am delighted to share that I have been selected for the Delfina Foundation x Gaia Art Foundation UK Associateship - science_technology_society. This 3 month residency will give me the opportunity to extend my research into the impact of light pollution on the biological world, and how it changes our view of our place within the universe. I will be working with two other wonderful artists, Sonya Dyer and Anna Ridler. The residency runs from October - December. You can read see my profile here and read about the programme here. Towards the end of the residency I will be presenting an event at the Delfina Foundation, which I will share closer to the time.

Pale Blue Dot Collective Residency at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora in Christchurch

From 17 - 27 September 2020 Pale Blue Dot Collective will be doing a residency at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. I will physically in residence in Christchurch, and John will be collaborating on the outcomes of the residency across the oceans, whilst he is in the UK.

Together we will be looking into the history of the forests of Aotearoa New Zealand and the life that lived there before humanity arrived on these shores. Here are some images from our self direct residency of the South Island last year, taken in the magnificent Peel Forest. During this residency, I will be staying onsite at the Arts Centre, as well as spending two nights at the Hinewai Reserve on Banks Peninsula and visiting the South Island Wildlife Hospital. We will be displaying our work at the Arts Centre in the future.

Precious Cargo/ Precious World 2020 - Earth Collections by Art Science Exhibits

Art Science Exhibits has selected ‘In Saturating Blackness’ to be part of their Earth Collections.

Precious Cargo, Precious World is the inaugural exhibition of Earth Collections, the Permanent Collection of the Art/NaturSci Movement - the second movement in Art History to be spearheaded by a woman.

​The collection represents the leading-edge of art making with dedication to positive action for Earth's recovery. Curating from the collection will limit the carbon footprint of all the exhibits we present on subjects of Ecosystem Regeneration and Climate Change. 
​
Transport on the AVONTUUR limits our carbon to nearly zero, as 2d artworks are printed, framed, and launched from Hamburg - where our voyage begins - to be exhibited onboard in Sicily from 20 October 2020, before making its way around the Mediterranean.

The collection represents the leading-edge of art making with dedication to positive action for Earth's recovery. Curating from the collection will limit the carbon footprint of all the exhibits we present on subjects of Ecosystem Regeneration and Climate Change. 

Read more about this exciting project led by MP Warming here.

Image: Timbercoast

SUPER/COLLIDER SUPER/SCIENCE E7: SOUND MACHINES

Join us for the next super/collider super/science event on Thursday 27 August at 7PM BST.

Tickets £5 / Buy Tickets Here

The event will feature talks and live performances of Lomond Campbell's harmonographic synth, Hainbach's tape loops and test equipment. This event follows on from Sound Machines at Ace Hotel in 2018, with Look Mum No Computer and Graham Dunning.

Lomond Campbell got tired of trying to make it work in the city so took a chance and bought an old, decrepit 1966 school building that nobody wanted, deep in the rural highlands of Scotland.  He took five years out to convert it in to a studio called The Lengths where he now works.  Living quietly by a loch, he divides his time between making music and building music making contraptions.  Amongst his past glories are winning a BAFTA and recording an album with an orchestra which was released by Heavenly Recordings. 

Based out of Berlin, Germany, electro-acoustic music composer and performer Hainbach (Opal Tapes, Seil Records) creates shifting audio landscapes THE WIRE called "One hell of a trip". Using esoteric synthesizers, test equipment, magnetic tape and idiophones his music is both abstract yet very much a corporal experience. He has become known for his immersive live performances for and recently through his YouTube channel, where he brings experimental music techniques to a wider audience.

New Reading Group Event Series: READINGS FOR UNCERTAIN TIMES / LUMEN + ELASTIC FICTION

Lumen is very pleased to announce a new online event series, Readings for Uncertain Times. The first three events are in collaboration with Elastic Fiction. These events are generously funded by the Arts Council England.

Readings for Uncertain Times, Session One - James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis

Tuesday 4 August, 6.30pm-8pm (via Zoom). Join reading group via Patreon

Can Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis help navigate a ‘rebalancing’ in the wake of Covid-19?

Join Lumen for a reading group and online gathering using James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis as a stimulus to explore the precarious and deeply entangled nature of life, and consider how or if it might be possible to balance or rebuild the ruptured systems of our planet in the wake of the climate crisis and global pandemic. The session will be chaired by Lumen and led by Elastic Fiction (Becky Lyon), an artist and researcher exploring nature futures. Lumen and Elastic Fiction will select headline and supporting texts to open up discussion on Lovelock’s work, and explore the ‘reading group’ as a method for working through confusion, cynicism and uncertain futures. 

About the Gaia hypothesis

James Lovelock began to formulate the Gaia hypothesis while working for NASA in the 1960s, when challenged by NASA scientists to design an experiment for detecting possible life on Mars. Later becoming an Independent scientist and informed by his work alongside microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Lovelock developed the hypothesis that life on earth functions as a single organism and that all living matter from carbon-based life forms to the air, the oceans and land surfaces form a complex, self-regulating system that maintains earth’s capacity to accommodate life. He speaks to the world-making capacity of life where the geologic and the atmospheric are in/direct products of living organisms. 1979’s Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth was his first treatise on the concept and acts as a headline reference for this session.

Lumen’s reading group series

This and forthcoming reading groups offer a welcoming environment for discussion that is open to all and encouraging of multiple understandings of the world around us. The sessions are embedded and engaged in interrogating more-than-human times, exploring how ‘nature’ has been and still is, colonised, controlled, represented, researched, and protected today. In precarious times we privilege words, philosophies, imaginings of our peers and esteemed thinkers alike for wisdom and guidance.

Read more on the event page.

New Commission - super/collider x Imperial College London: biodiverse/earth

super/collider’s biodiverse/earth commission by Imperial Lates explores the impact of human impact on the forests of Costa Rica. We present Jenna Lawson’s findings as an immersive audio-visual experience, as we journey from biodiverse forests, untouched by human hands, to disturbed plantations of palm and teak, where a haunting silence exists due to the loss of life as natural forest ecosystems are removed.

It is our hope that from this experience, you can better understand the sheer diversity of life in our world, and the startling loss when we destroy these incredible ecosystems for everyday products that we all use, whilst reconnecting with nature and enjoying the health benefits from immersing in the sounds of the natural world. The results from Lawson’s research will be used to understand the threats that exist and guide the protection and restoration of native forests, connect forest fragments and increase populations of the spider monkey.

Watch the 40 minute video here.