NEOSCOPE - An Exhibition in Time and Space
NEOSCOPE was my first solo exhibition and launch of my latest photobook, a synthesis of many of my life’s passions - photography, astronomy, Scottish History, and poetry. It took place in Saltspace Gallery, Glasgow, in Septmber 2023, and I am keen to bring it to other galleries and events in future.
Below is a brief description, but in the near future an online version of the exhibition will be viewable here too. The book, containing all twenty composite images and poetry, can be purchased here.
For this project I have placed my analogue photography of Scotland’s standing stones into dialogue with NASA and ESA’s space telescope imagery, creating a conversation across 5000 years, and a collaboration between the astronomers of our past and our present. Just as these neolithic monuments were huge community efforts, so too are the images seen here, the result of massive community collaboration across countless institutions, by over 20,000 astronomers, engineers, physicists and other experts.
Viewed from a post-human world, with nothing but the stars above us and the monuments we built to understand them, and where our 21st century technology is as mysterious and open to interpretation as the stone circles of our neolithic ancestors, a timeline of grief, purpose, curiosity, and collaboration emerge through the Neoscope.
This timeline circles around the gallery space, beginning at the Big Bang 13.8 Billion years ago. It maps out the formation of the cosmos, human settlement and monument in Scotland, the development of satellite technology, and all the creative and technological influences which have informed my own creative practice, leading right up to the creation of Neoscope itself. On making this journey through time, it is impossible to avoid the looming climate crisis, the past, present, and future of which is also represented within the narrative of the exhibition.
In dialogue with these mixed-media visuals is my writing and poetry, created at the Alasdair Gray Archive in response to works by both Alasdair Gray and poet Dr Maria Sledmere. This poetry describes the mysterious remnants of humanity, gazing out at the cosmos, monuments to our genius, our curiosity, and our love of the stars.
The Neoscope - mixed media painting based on my book cover illustration, featuring the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope overplayed with a hexadic stone circle.