Future Now
Aesthetica Art Prize
York St Mary’s, UK
26 March to 31 May 2015
Artist - Jasmine Morgan Ryan and selected shortlisted artists.
Future Now showcases cutting-edge practice from today’s ground-breaking contemporary artists, the Aesthetica Art Prize exhibition 2015 invited viewers to discover global concepts through pioneering art and design, and encouraged an awareness of the innovative work being produced across a variety of media today.
From contentions of physical and digital space to the political struggles of localised regimes and globalised laws, key contemporary themes were discussed by 2015’s dynamic practitioners. Connecting with visitors on many levels, be it visually or conceptually, the innovators selected for this year’s award hailed from locations including Australia, Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA.
Celebrating individual mediums whilst recognising the richness of interdisciplinary practice, the 2015 selection was distributed across the categories of Photographic and Digital Art; Painting and Drawing; Three Dimensional Design and Sculpture, and Video, Installation and Performance.
Longlisted and shortlisted artists have gone on to achieve success around the globe, including Jason deCaires Taylor, creator of the first underwater sculpture park in Grenada and recently the artist behind an environmental installation on the banks of the River Thames. Chilean-born photographer Carolina Redondo has since been selected for In Search of the Miraculous at Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange and French photographer Noémie Goudal has had solo shows at FOAM in Amsterdam and The Photographers’ Gallery in London
Artwork Presented -
What the eyes do not see, 2014.
Telescopes and hand blown glass component, mirrored lenses.
L800 W 2600 H 1600mm
"At night when I look through my telescope I often wonder could there be another person with a telescope looking back at me?"
I suffer from what 17th-century English philosopher Francis Bacon called ‘a mystified incomprehension that science alone cannot cure.’ When I think about observation I sense there is a greater connection between object and observer than my eyes can fathom. The Entanglement Paradox has scientifically proven that the observer and subject become molecularly entangled during observation creating an osmotic transference of energy and information. This connection happens instantaneously at a minimum of over 10,000 times faster than the speed of light.
What the eyes do not see aims to explore how observation challenges the way we understand the world, and how thinking about observation changes what we see.
This work was also awarded the Senini Prize in 2014 by McClelland Gallery.
Visual Quest
Aesthetica Magazine - Editorial Review
Investigating and magnifying the natural world through a range of artistic mediums, Jasmine Targett makes tangible the blind spots, the voids and the mystical gaps concealed beneath the abstract layers of the universe. Her portfolio attempts to solidify the connection between object and observer. The inventive creator frequently collaborates with environmental data organisations and scientists, cementing her work within a milieu of topical conservational discussion.
Currently residing in Melbourne, yet raised in New York, the practitioner stresses the importance of learning how climate science has changed the way nature is perceived and understood. By reinterpreting traditional materials through innovative technologies, her collection breaches the ‘mystified incomprehension that science alone cannot cure’ – a hole in human understanding the 19th century philosopher Francis Bacon eluded to and a gap Targett attempts to diminish.
Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2015, her installation What the eyes do not see demonstrates how acuity challenges the way individuals understand the world. Two telescopes are fused with a hand-blown glass component, uniting them inseparably and alleviating the empty space between them. The work highlights that by thinking about observation we are able to alter what we see. Drawing attention to the subjective nature of perception, the work also highlights the ability of art and science to expand the gaze and destroy the blind spots.
Since her participation in the Aesthetica Art Prize, Targett has continued to impact the art world. Her intricately crafted installation Blind Spot charts the discovery of the ozone hole and the subsequent tipping point of ecological awareness. By observing nature filtered through imagery from NASA’s Earth Observing Satellite Data Centre the Ozone hole could be mapped to human scale.
This May, the Australian artist’s work is exhibited at Art + Climate = Change Festival in Melbourne – an event committed to harnessing the creative energy of the arts to inspire action on climate change. The featured: My Nike Will Live Longer Than Me analyses the impact of consumerism on the natural world. Artificial longevity is indicated, yet the quartz crystals piercing the shoe’s surface suggests the climate’s power to recover the environment from humanity.
The Nike sits upon a dichroic-lens – sourced from NASA space technology – which changes colour depending upon the angle of perception. Also on display is Noctilucent Canary, a series probing the edges of vision. Telemetry, data and images of Noctilucent phenomena are filtered through a series of prisms and lens to examine the transitory process through which super-ecological phenomena are visible.
Offering a techno-romantic glimpse into existence, Targett’s pioneering technical explorations unite the biospheres of art and science. The installations provoke a response in regard to the changing earth and aim to incite new perspectives, as well as discover new sources of vision.
Art + Climate = Change Festival, 19 April – 14 May, Melbourne, Australia. For more information, visit www.climarte.org
Credits
1. Jasmine Targett, What the eyes do not see, 2014
Posted on 2 April 2017
To access article in full - https://aestheticamagazine.com/visual-quest/