New sculpture made at the Cast Iron Sculpture Workshops (2014), USA

 July 2014

Alison Gill, Grain of a Universe (Lithic/Ferric) (2014)

 Cast iron, rock, neodymium and ceramic magnets

The Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum, Indiana USA

Every year the Sculpture Trails Iron Foundry invites artists to participate in the Annual Sculpture Trails Cast Iron Sculpture Workshops. Having worked with Gerry Masse (Director) previously in Ironbridge there was a natural link. The international iron casting community talk of an ‘iron family’. It was certainly a highly productive and creative environment, giving each participating artist tremendous support in realising their ideas in a short space of time. A site specific sculpture ‘Grain of a Universe (Lithic/Ferric)’, 2014, was produced in their workshop and foundry and placed in situ at The Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum, Indiana USA.

Alison Gill’s sculpture at the 37th International Conference on High Energy Physics, Valencia

2 – 9 July 2014

Alison Gill, Stranger Than Paradise (Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Magic Bean, Frog Prince, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Thumb) (2013)

Steel, plaster, cement, Carrara marble dust, neodymium magnets, string

6 parts, Installation size variable

Art@CMS* presents sculpture Stranger Than Paradise (2013), by Alison Gill at the 37th International Conference on High Energy Physics in Valencia, Spain (Palacio De Congresos De Valencia). 

“What I recall most about making the sculpture, Stranger Than Paradise, is the sense of wonder and awe I felt after visiting the world’s largest science experiments at CERN during 2012/13. I wanted to represent that union in some way. Stranger Than Paradise is a sculpture in six parts. It uses the force of magnetism and gravity and is also inspired by quarks in the Standard Model. Each part derives a name from a different fairy tale: Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Magic Bean, Frog Prince, Rumpelstiltskin and Tom Thumb. The power of naming is used to evoke stories of magical and transformative properties. The hanging and levitating, primitive and embryonic sculptural forms are suggestive of giant particles and related phenomena but remain, to a degree, uncertain and unknowable, experienced differently by each observer. The sculpture, Stranger Than Paradisebecomes a way to grasp the mystery of unseen dimensions. The more you look, the more you begin to see.”

Alison Gill, June 2014

*Art@CMS is a public engagement initiative of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator atCERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

y 2nd till 9th 2014

  Alison Gill created the works with the participation of physicist Ian Shipsey

The Alternative Cardiff Story (2014)

Friday 16^th May, 7 – 10pm at Cardiff Story Museum, Wales

The Alternative Cardiff Story (Cardiff by Parris): A collaboration between Janette Parris and the Cardiff Story Museum with contributing artists including Alison Gill. Also see Parris/Gill on going collaboration ‘Ask Alison – giving the art’s advice thats not very nice’ for Arch Comic  produced by Parris.

Research Artist – Art@CMS CERN (2013 – 2014)

December 2013 – July 2014 – Alison Gill – To See a World

Alison Gill show new sculpture at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN

The exhibition includes catalogue with texts by Paul Carey-Kent, art critic and from CMS CERN, Ian Shipsey, who is also Professor of Experimental Physics at Oxford University.

Alison Gill – Research Artist with Art@CMS 2013, at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment: CERN, Point 5, CMS, Cessy, France.

There will be artists talks during the exhibition at CERN sites in Geneva and France including:

11 December CERN library: Introduction by Ariane Koek, director and creator of Collide@CERN Arts Residency programme and International Arts Development – CERN, Geneva.

Alison Gill – Sculpture Stories and Invisible Things  How might the presence of an artist influence the experiment at CMS? And how does the LHC change the artist and the work they make? Over the last two decades, I have worked with a wide range of media to create both sculpture and drawing. The interdisciplinary approach that I have taken has often involved engagement and dialogues with scientists. Through my art, I explore the stories we tell to make sense of things that seem beyond our conscious grasp, taking familiar objects and materials and re-purposing, casting or altering the meaning. Underlying themes have included folklore, beliefs and methods used in the pursuit of transcendence. Knots, Klein bottles and Möbius strips have also been used for their topological, emotive and metaphysical associations. I try to scrutinize the world around me to find hidden meanings and use humor to provoke thought, elicit curiosity and wonder. I will examine the parallels between my work as an artist and that of the CMS scientist. I will also describe the challenges of making sculpture for CMS and how it has produced the conditions for a new body of work.

It’s About Time (2013)

It’s About Time Curated by Christina Niederberger and Paul Carey-Kent, ASC Gallery, London.

Artists Include: Emma Bennett, Andy Charalambous, Susan Collins, Alison Gill, Nick Hornby, Alex Hudson, Civia Marin, Pernille Holm Mercer,  Nika Neelova, Christina Niederberger,  Abigail Reynolds, Harold Smykla and Dolly Thompsett.

Exhibition includes catalogue and curators talk.

The Congress for Curious People (2013)

Thursday 5th September, 7pm at Swedenborg House

The Congress for Curious People – ‘Luminations: An Evening of Esoteric Photography’,  Swedenborg House, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TH

Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men, Far Out, and Strange Attractor overlord, will talk about the history of Kirlian photography and its role in US and Soviet espionage at the height of the Cold War with artist Alison Gill (London, UK) and photographer/independent researcher Shannon Taggart (Brooklyn, USA).