Friday 29th November, 6-7.30pm (Peltz Gallery)

Simon Barraclough (author of Neptune Blue, Sunspots, and writer in residence at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory 2014) will lead us through a poetic response to the Otherworldly exhibition in the gallery space. The session, which is open to all those who are interested in participating in a workshop, will feature readings, exhibition performances and written exercises that reflect the contents of the
but also aim to open up new trajectories out from the exhibition towards new work and new ideas

Expect to read, write, discuss and feed back to one another in a supportive environment.

The event will also feature a live performance of the soundscape created for the exhibition, performed by sound artists Arlo Bailey-Evans and Crow Higgott.

Otherworldly was a group exhibition of London-based emerging artists who have worked in dialogue with the latest research in astrobiology. The study of the origins, evolution and distribution of life in the universe, astrobiology is one of contemporary science’s most rapidly developing areas of research. It explores questions such as: What is life? How does life arise from non-life? What are the essentials and contingencies of habitability and evolution? Are we alone?

Artists Hildy Biernoff and Lo Cleary imagine through painting and drawing the forms that life could take on three speculative worlds—an icy moon named Boreas; a super-Earth, Jötunn; and a gas giant, Vayu-Vatu. Biernoff’s and Cleary’s work is informed by exchanges with the exhibition curators, Birkbeck students Joshua Goodland and Matt Kimberley, who shared with the artists the latest scientific knowledge about what life could look like in extraterrestrial environments. Multimedia artists Arlo Bailey-Evans and Crow Higgott have developed a sound piece that provides an atmosphere for these as yet unknown but highly evocative and increasingly familiar landscapes. The works, moreover, remind us of the importance of art-science collaborations in making outer space visible and felt.

Supported by the Royal Astronomical Society, and Birkbeck, University of London. With special thanks for the advice of Professor Roger Luckhurst and Dr Andrew Rushby.