Naomi Riddle, editor Running Dog 2019
Eternity Faraway So Close
If it takes four years for the light of a star to reach the earth, then what we are looking at when we look up at the night sky is an after-image rather than the actual event. We stand, rooted in the present, but we are looking at the past. Yes, you will say, I’ve heard this story before, just as I’ve heard that if atoms are filled with vacant space, then everything we think of as solid is really empty. We tend to counter these revelations with our own lived experience—‘it might be the past, but I’m looking at the star right now’, says the child, or ‘if my toy is made of air, then why can I pick it up in my hand?’ For all we may think we understand atoms and the speed of light, the scientific truth still jars with the reality of what we can touch and see. The study of the universe, and the exploration of space, ruptures the straight plane of our everyday. It makes us aware that much of what we take to be firm fact is illusion—a series of principles cobbled together. It takes the grand narratives we tell ourselves about human progress, conquest and achievement, and reduces them to the size of a fingernail. When the first images from the surface of the moon were beamed down to our television screens, the image that was most shocking was not so much Neil Armstrong’s blurry footprint, but the earth suspended in the background. We saw our planet in its entirety. It was fragile, quiet, and, most of all, alone. Giles Alexander’s new series of paintings and sculptures draws on the history of space exploration, particle physics and astronomy, and alludes to ideas of faith and spirituality. The result is an eclectic body of work that speculates on the hidden wonders and illusions of the cosmos, our unmitigated desire to explore its realms, and our need to understand our place within it. Many of these works reference the images of the universe directly: Re-presenting the unseeable (2019) presents a study of the first image of a black hole, and Binary Crib Theory (2019) marks the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing. In constructing these works in the style of photorealism, Alexander is performing a double illusion—they are representations of representations, which, on first inspection, appear to be as real as their source material. But these paintings also suggest the way in which astronomy relies on a similar suspension of disbelief. Like Alexander’s paintings, the ‘photographs’ we have of the universe consist of images and data points stitched together from multiple sources. Just as the painter must work with colour and shade, so too must the astrophysicist become a translator of light. Alexander’s photorealism—which encourages us to question how we see and respond to the medium of paint—complicates how we apprehend such images of the universe. What is it we are looking at when we see an image constructed out of chopped up radio waves? Is it possible for us to fully see this unseeable event, even when we have the tangible photograph in front us, or only infer it? But although Alexander is dealing in realism, he is also moving in the opposite direction. That is, you can think of much of the work in Eternity: Far Away. So Close. as a kind of speculative futurism, one that is grounded in the legacies of science fiction and the stories of Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clark, H. G Wells and Ursula K. Le Guin. For Alexander, space travel functions as a site for the imaginary—a place to (re)consider narratives of progress and discovery. Patriotic modelled algorithm for a Medieval Spaceship (2019) reconfigures a model ship as an interstellar vessel, while Binary Crib Theory offers a view of the dark side of the moon: the spot where Arthur C. Clark imagined we would discover an ancient alien species. Electric Chiaroscuro 2 (2019) takes the Pantheon in Rome and repurposes this ancient monument beneath a futuristic pink-purple glaze. In doing this, Alexander is considering the permutations and offshoots of human history through the wide-angle lens of the universe. Indeed, it is the act of placing these works side by side that allows for the slow reveal of a multi-linear narrative. Taken this way, Eternity: Far Away. So Close. becomes less about the unknown corners of the cosmos and more about the experience of being human: What counts as progress? What value does truth hold in the face of 13.8 billion years? Can we see an image of the earth without being reminded of our hubris and our fragility? Because as much as our obsession with space is propelled by our need to think through new worlds, it is also driven by the desire to better understand and reshape this world—a world in which we all must live.