ASTRONOMY PROJECT
Creativity and Curiosity: A Collaboration between Artists and Astronomers
Creativity and Curiosity is an international art-science project led by UK contemporary artists Ione Parkin RWA and Gillian McFarland SSA in connection with astrophysicists, cosmologists and planetary geologists from the universities of Leicester, Birmingham and Cardiff, Imperial College London, the Institute of Astronomy (Cambridge), the University of Amsterdam and the Potsdam Institute for Astrophysics (Berlin). The artists have given presentations on the project at conferences, institutes, science venues and other events, including at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, the Royal Astronomical Society, Berlin Science Week, the National Space Centre, the AIS Conference in Amsterdam, the INSAP Conference (Santiago de Compostella) and the Hebridean Dark Skies Festival (2029 and 2020 at An Lanntair Centre, Stornoway). Exhibitions include the Zeiss-Grossplanetarium (Berlin), Glasgow Science Centre and An Lanntair (Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides). Invited artist-collaborators include Kate Bernstein, Alison Lochhead, Daniela de Paulis and Collette Rayner.
The artists have developed a body of work exploring the rich imagery of space, engaging in creative dialogue with researchers and gaining new insights into the dynamic forces of the universe. This artist-led project also explores the nature of interdisciplinarity within the practice of visual thinking.
Ione Parkin’s large scale paintings express her fascination about the early formation of the universe: massive clouds of cosmic dust; vast webs of colour and shimmering light; solar dynamics; luminous visions of immensity. Her richly texture mixed-media works on paper are inspired by planetary surfaces, extremes of temperature and geological process - resembling samples of the undiscovered terrain of distant moons.
Gillian McFarland collaborates with Graeme Hawes, producing multiple ‘space globes’ that embody ideas of extremes of heat, rotation, gravity, expansion and collapse. Her prints echo surface impacts and her punctured paper works explore orbit tracking across space.
Responses from collaborating astronomers are shown next to the individual artworks at project exhibitions, revealing insights into the art-science dialogue. The artists are expressing a lateral, not literal, response to the scientific research – a physical, tactile experience rather than an explanation. Parallels of process have emerged between the artists and scientists – an excitement about uncertainty, ambiguity and anomaly – a desire not just to observe but to look beyond.
Ione Parkin RWA: Royal West of England Academician; Honorary Visiting Fellow, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester.
Gillian McFarland SSA: Society of Scottish Artists; Visual Artist; Art Therapist/Educator.
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“I always think the work you do is amazing and beautiful. It is as if you are creating your own universe of planets, stars and galaxies. Ione’s paintings seem to represent all the possible surfaces of the planets, from frozen worlds in the depths of planetary chill to hot sulphuric young worlds just forming from the nebulae surrounding their host stars. In Gillian’s work I see the delicate tracery of ring systems and swirling colliding groups of stars and galaxies, and her own take on exotic planets orbiting distant stars.” Professor Martin Barstow, Professor of Astrophysics & Space Science, University of Leicester.
For more information on the Creativity & Curiosity project see Acknowledgements and Exhibitions and Talks.
