Private View 27th May 2008 6.30pm- 9.00pm

This show presents work from the ARSciE project, a collaboration between artists and scientists curated by Dora Tang. These projects attempt to reconcile questions of art and science that emerged from a series of spontaneous and coordinated dialogues. The exhibition highlights a point in time in the ongoing research and includes work by 10 artists and scientists:

Jackson Webb in collaboration with Dora Tang presents a series of Chemical Drawings‘ from 2006; part of an on-going project investigating the nature of cross-disciplinary collaborative practice. Each eye-like drawing is created by dropping chemicals onto paper. The collaborators see these works as ‘un-authored’, their involvement was in setting up conditions for the drawings to grow themselves. This can be seen as a metaphor for the collaborative process, in which authorship becomes outside of the individual and is selfpropelled in a shared, reflexive space. Furthermore, the work raises epistemological questions about the relationship of knowledge to the visual, and the nature of research in the Art and Science disciplines.

Richard Grimes exhibits Sculpture system number 2: Sculpture number 5. 2000-2008. Sculpture system number 2 is part of a series of Modular forms developed over the last eight years. It is the nature of the modern artwork that it is associated with, if not a memento of, its producer, by Inventing rather than appropriating a module you generate sculpture which is associated with you though the eventual form into which it is amalgamated may be the product of a collaboration. The module therefore has the same ability as an equation to generate form which is both limited and infinite.

Adrian Shaw has included painting-collages and videos, exploring issues affecting the Environment, and areas of Science underpinning existence: ranging from the micro to macroworld encompassing structures and dynamic principles.

Edmund Harriss’ work for ARScie has three tilings that are the projections of surfaces in 3 or 4 dimensions. The tilings are shaded in different ways to explore the ways our minds convert 2 dimensional images into higher dimensional structures.

Nick Brooks shows everyday images which have been digitally filtered; a technique used in microscopy to aid visualisation, questioning modes of visualisation in science.

Andy McCafferty explores the notion of object permanence through shapes derived from mental models (theoretical physics) which may fit reality. When faces with uncertain knowledge the brain fills the empty spaces; synthetic sensory concepts are translated back into space as semi 3D objects through a repeated cycle of photographic reproductions of a set and auditory translations of these reproduction conveying multiple temporal perspectives.

Dora Tang shows ‘a gyroid phase’, a structure relevant to mathematicians and biophysicists. She uses object making as a projection of an internal dialogue between the art and science disciplines which she engages in. Exploring and making conscious the grey areas in perceptual knowledge between the 2-D and 3-D and between models of nature and its reality.

The Bryan Parsons and Stuart Nippress collaboration is the culmination of ten years of discussion and many more years of friendship. They decided to pursue their collaboration by dealing with the processes, perspectives and language inherent to their own practices. The exploration has revealed surprising similarities as well as differences and we have chosen to focus our attention on things which their combined processes can reveal and which their individual approaches may miss. This exhibition marks the beginning of an ever increasing set of possibilities and a wealth of unexplored potential.