‘Something very strange is happening to you right now, a
swarm of ghosts is flowing through your body’.
Through working with paper, print, collage and olive oil I
have tried to tackle the problem of visualising the Neutrino’s distinct
characteristics described here by the narrator of ‘Project Poltergeist ‘, BBC
television’s Horizon’s documentary on Ghost Particles.
At first I created paper sets, constructed from full colour
page magazine photographs of interiors of university libraries, neatly cutting
slits in bookcase lined walls for spectral paper Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen
to glide through. This response of a familiar visual figurative world; the
tradition of the headless horsemen and the wandering Nun (complied by ghost
hunters such as Harry Price and Peter Isherwood) had a limited resonance. I
realised I wasn’t interested in materialisation of the invisible; I wanted my
materials to disappear.
During the summer I noticed a piece of oil stained paper,
pinned to a dirty wall of an empty art school room. Returning to my studio
picking up materials at hand; old brushes, cartridge paper and olive oil, I
recreated the translucent surface I had observed, so images, paper, jay cloths
and other things could ‘pass through visually’ as it were. I felt results of
this experiment resonated sensations and feelings I had at first experienced in
learning about Neutrinos flowing charateristics.
I've longlast managed to photograph my contribution to the Jiggling Atoms Physics Illustration Exhibition - at the time of the show the work was never recorded - so here it is !
