Stranger Than Paradise (2013)

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

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

82 x 42 x 40.5 cm,  61 x 36 x 36 cm (installation size variable)

‘It makes sense, then, that Gill’s work brings together interests in topology, the physical sciences, psychoanalysis, folklore and, of course, art; yet does not treat those as different in kind, but as points of equal interest on a continuum. That makes it appropriate to suggest an affinity with Blake, who was writing at a time when poetry, philosophy and science felt like part of one large project of enquiry. The discipline of sculpture suits this approach, given that, as Gill herself says, ‘it is dealing with matter and its absence, material both seen and unseen’; and that leads her into what she calls ‘the dimension of not knowing’.

So how does the work which Gill has made for CMS at CERN fit in with this? In the six sculptures which make up Stranger Than Paradise, magnetised objects hang in steel frames with dimensions taken from Giacometti’s early Surrealist works. They operate in abstract terms, but also reference scientific modelling, and in doing so they alternate between micro and macro levels. Just what are those cratered balls with blind alleys, tunnels and holes? Atomic particles? Planets? Or people in relationships? Gill points to the potential narrative of those relations through the sub-titles of these pieces, all of which incorporate a fairy tale which can also be read as linking to one of the six particles which are quarks in the Standard Model: Sleeping Beauty (Beauty/Bottom); Rumpelstiltskin (Strange); Tom Thumb (Down); Rapunzel (Truth/Top); Frog Prince (Charm) and Magic Bean (Up).

The science of Stranger Than Paradise is too simple to deceive. Everyone understands magnetic force. Yet a residual air of mystery does remain whenever bodies act without visible cause. And if the objects do stand in for people, they put me in mind of how behaviour can appear to come from nowhere, even the extremes which are seen in those early Giacometti sculptures. Our speculation as to causes will be rooted in psychology rather than science. That might set us wondering, though, whether the former might eventually be reduced to the latter through an ultimate understanding of the chemistry and physics of the brain, just as the sculpture’s interactions can be explained by magnetic and gravitational laws.

What are the shapes, by the way? Gill explains that they all began from either the sphere or a Russian doll, and that, too, provides an appropriate combination of contrasts: they start from either perfect rationalism, for which read science or maths; or from a sequential concatenation of myth, from art or religion.’

Extract from catalogue essay: ‘Alison Gill – To See A World‘, Paul Carey-Kent