USA Entanglement Tour – ArtCenter/South Florida

Matter: The Fundamental Particles

ArtCenter/South Florida, 924 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL 33139

For this Art@CMS exhibition, Alison Gill’s Grain of a Universe (Lithic N 39° 07.142′ W 086° 47.045′ /Ferric N 25°47.42556′ W 080° 08.28708′) was selected from artist/scientist collaborations as well as video artists who were invited to create pieces inspired by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment.

The CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics that sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. CERN is one of the world’s largest and most respected centers for scientific research. It operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world where physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. They use the most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter—the fundamental particles—that provide insights into the fundamental laws of nature. CMS is designed to measure the properties of previously discovered particles with unprecedented precision, and be on the lookout for completely new, unpredicted phenomena.

USA Entanglement Tour – Fermilab Gallery, Chicago

Grain of a Universe (Lithic N 39° 07.142′ W 086° 47.045′ /Ferric N 41° 50.34066’ W 88° 1.799527’), 2014/15

Exhibited presented by Art@CMS CERN at Fermilab Gallery, Chicago. Fermilab is America’s premier particle physics laboratory.

Lithic, a sandstone mineral rock, marks a point of the trail on The Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum, Indiana USA. Ferric, a magnetic iron cast of the rock sits beside it, one and the same form. For the exhibition at Fermilab Ferric moves to Chicago, while Lithic will remain in Indiana marking a point on the Trail. The ferric cast (iron) magnetic rock, a compass back to the point of it’s origin, a lodestone* of sorts, is geographically dislocated from its point of creation; Ferric in orbit of Lithic, a permanent motion and entanglement between the two rocks.

Grain of a Universe (Lithic N 39° 07.142′ W 086° 47.045′ /Ferric N 41° 50.34066’W 88° 1.799527’), suggests a material or metaphysical fragment with it’s origins and future part of an ongoing cosmological odyssey, a strange (and fearful) symmetry. Time and sun, rain, snow and ice will act upon the two forms differently, drawing each into a process of entropic transformation.

*Lodestones are highly magnetic rocks of iron ore, that naturally attract pieces of iron with their magnetic properties and align themselves with the north/south axis of the earth. They were used by early (spiritual and geographical) navigators to make compasses. The name lodestone, in Middle English means ‘course stone’ or ‘leading stone’.

Love is on its way

Press for three new sculptures made in 2015 exhibited at LOVE, Gate House Gallery, Guernsey by Shaun Shakleton at Guernsey Press.

Alison Gill’s new sculptures for the exhibition ‘LOVE’, invites us to consider romantic vision and what is revealed by human need to look into the very fabric of the universe, simultaneously looking forward in time and back to the beginnings of the cosmos. Love, like the recent discovery of Higgs Boson or the continuing search for dark matter and dark energy, is hard to find and and yet no less desirable.

Action at a Distance (the Leap), (2015), represents a phenomenon known to quantum theory and also lovers. The sculpture consists of a pair of steel frames reminiscent of Giacometti’s early Surrealist works, placed apart. Attached to the frames and crossing the boundary, are metallic fluid forms held together and kept apart by the magnetic field. It is a meditation on ideas of invisible things embedded within philosophical questions of what connects us, binds us together and fills ‘emptiness’ with matter.

O-scope (Spooky and Wild), (2015), this rotating sculpture is made in steel, using magnets and detector wire from the CMS detector at CERN. It is concerned with the difficulty of entering spaces and other dimensions that cannot be seen and are difficult to conceive. The hole at the centre of the sculpture marks a journey that cannot be taken. The sculpture uses magnets like the ones in the collider’s experiments, their opposing forces signifying the difficulty of entering this world, no matter how appealing. It represents an opening into the realm of possibility, which will forever be open to the mind to explore but closed to experience. Wire thread, woven through the space of the piece in a mathematical thirteen-point pattern, is known as a mystic rose.

Entanglement Attractor, (2015) takes a Mobius strip, links it with another Mobius strip, the famous puzzling mathematical continuous surface, and laser cuts each surface with hexagonal shapes. The piece investigates the knotty conditions of transformations, through time and space and a process involving fire, cutting, bending, collision and magnetic attraction.

The new sculptures create a space for curiosity and for imagination to evolve. Like the ‘Eureka’ moment or the ‘Freudian slip’ Gill’s work allows us to experience what is hidden, but not unknowable. In Gill’s art the unconscious speaks. Gill continues to push these boundaries by presenting new sculpture related to the birth of stars and love, ideas of ‘endless’, eternal union and doorways into a space where everything is connected.

Stranger Than Paradise and Her Majesty the Queen of Belgium

The 60th Anniversary of CERN – Science for Peace – Art and Science exhibition, Academy Palace, Brussels featured sculpture by Alison Gill presented by Art@CMS CERN.

Sense of Universe at the Earth & Man Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria

Alison Gill invited by Art@CMS to participate in the Art and Science Symposium SENSE of UNIVERSE in Sofia / Bulgaria exhibiting sculptures produced during 2013 while working as Research Artist at CMS CERN

Alison Gill exhibits at The Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates /seconds

Sharjah Art Foundation, Building I, SAF Art Spaces

Exhibition: /seconds.  11.10.14 – 10.12.14

Curated by Peter Lewis, /seconds. presents a selection of artists’ works from the online journal of the same title (2004-2014), which covers a broad range of issues and art practices from different cultural perspectives. A small selection of artists including original works by Alison Gill and commissioned digital posters.

The project was initiated in 2004 and has invited over 1500 artists and writers to contribute over the years. The exhibition features key contributions from the ten year period of the project, works on display include installations, interactive performance, video, photography and commissioned posters.

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.