Collaboration by Charles Jencks and Alex Rigg will launch summer solstice festival marking first birthday of the Crawick Multiverse in Dumfries and Galloway
An exhibition featuring new work by Charles Jencks and exploring the fundamental nature of the cosmos opens today (Saturday) as part of a three-day summer solstice festival.
Landscape of Waves is a collaboration between Jencks, the world-renowned artist, landscape architect and designer, and Alex Rigg the Scottish-based multi-disciplinary artist and designer. Both have a deep fascination with the forces that drive the cosmos and the resilience and intensity of life.
In part the exhibition reflects the evolution of Crawick Multiverse, a remarkable 55-acre visitor attraction created by Jencks, regenerating an open caste coal mine as an artland inspired by the themes of space, astronomy and cosmology.
The opening of Landscape of Waves, at the Merz Gallery in Sanquhar on Friday, 24 June, marks the start of the Festival of the Solstice, a weekend of events, talks and spectacular entertainment to celebrate the first birthday of the nearby Multiverse.
Rigg, the creator of abstract performances and sumptuous costumes often inspired by story, myth and history, has also played a significant role at the Multiverse.
The exhibition is a chance to see paintings and sculptures by Jencks, some entirely new and others reflecting the original artistic and intellectual development of Crawick Multiverse.
Jencks said: “Underpinning the exhibition, and the Crawick Multiverse itself, is the scientific thinking that waveforms are integral to the cosmos at its deepest levels – even the human mind works using waves.
“We can see this truth in all of nature and at all scales from gamma waves and radio waves to the Jet Stream waves that direct the weather patterns of rain, wind and temperature swirling around us every day.
“Waveforms permeate all the cosmos – they underlie water waves and brain waves, and are behind the twists and folds of the landscape.
“The painting and sculpture in the exhibition reveal how the landscape and skyscape are actually made up of waveforms.
“These kinds of ideas about science, art, nature and human culture and the persistence of life are ones that Alex and I approach in very different, but complementary ways.
“The costumed performances he has created for the solstice celebrations at the multiverse this year and last have been truly remarkable, bringing a whole additional dimension to my landforms. Something I hope people will enjoy about the exhibition is the chance to see how our different approaches interweave.”
Among the works on show by Jencks will be the preparatory paintings Sun Flare – Earth Shield a mosaic that is being unveiled in the Amphitheatre at the heart of the Crawick Multiverse, which was designed to hold up to 5,000 people.
Others reflect on the creative units of our universe such as the sun, the earth, black holes, and dramatise what they mean for us.
Visitors will see some of Rigg’s costumes, illustrations he made for their design, and a sculpture entitled Black Hole that is a response to Jencks’ ideas.
The five themes of the exhibition will be:
- The Crawick Multiverse
- Two Galaxies and Two Black Holes
- A Landscape of Waves
- Solar Flare – Earth Shield
- Supercluster and Multiverse
- Tickets available at A’ the Airts, 8-12, High Street, Sanquhar, DG4 6BL
- Call 01659 50514
For more information or to buy tickets for the summer solstice festival activities, visit www.crawickmultiverse.co.uk. Keep track of what’s happening at the Crawick Multiverse via the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/crawickmultiverse or check out @CMVerse on Twitter.
