- Venue
- Museum of the History of Science
- Location
Thus, like the moon, a lonely suppliant
invisible myself, I sail apart
until the sun reveals me with its beams.
In Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sonnet, Veggio co’be’ vostr’occhi un dolce lume, the artist likens himself and his lover to the moon and the sun, making the analogy that it is only in his lover’s light that he can be illuminated. In Moonscope, we are invited to explore a thought-provoking relationship between an artist and a scientist that is similarly enlightening.
In the Renaissance, art and science were commonly intertwined as branches of research and knowledge, with many of Michelangelo’s contemporaries being practitioners of both. More recently, we have witnessed many sci-art fusions in public exhibition spaces, which have varied largely in their degrees of success. This exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science is a triumph because of both its simplicity, and the quality of the work being shown. The exhibition space is divided in two; first, we encounter the work of John Russell, an Eighteenth century pastellist who turned from society portraits to lunar observation, which then leads us on to the paintings of Rebecca Hind, a painter living and working in Oxfordshire.
Evident in Russell’s work is a fascination with detail and the perception thereof. His drawn studies of the moon vary from small sketches to a five-foot, painstakingly accurate observational work in pastel. Also exhibited, and like the large drawing, from the Museum’s own collection, is a selenograph, a moon-globe with sections of parchment linked up in three dimensions to form a drawn version of our closest natural satellite. Together, these studies reveal an interest in the moon that borders on obsession, which seems only right in the context of the body with which we link madness and unexplainable events.
Rebecca Hind’s paintings have been made in response to her own preoccupation with the moon, and also with affectionate reference to Russell’s work. In a gallery talk, Hind described how her affinity with – and interest in – the moon began at a young age when she realised that it was the source of the previously fearsome shadows in her bedroom at night. Exhibited here are a collection of paintings, which, as we encounter them, morph through phases of the moon and grow in scale and depth; our passage through the gallery space coincides with the moon’s regular yet enigmatic shifts and transformations.
These characteristics of enigma and transformation are matched perfectly in Hind’s paintings, which are executed – rather surprisingly – in watercolour. These images take their medium to new scale and intensity, with paintings made in sizes to answer Russell’s huge pastel drawing. The velvety surface of Hind’s layered applications is both inviting and opaque – a quality rarely seen in this type of painting, and which eludes poignantly to the moon’s own mystery.
The moon, our most familiar celestial body, has long been a source of obsession, seen in ancient times as a god, and more recently as the subject of international competition and desired conquest. It’s most intriguing qualities though, are not tied to context of time or culture, but are rooted deeply in its own mysteries. It is the paradox of its familiarity and its unconquerable and incomprehensible qualities that makes the moon so intriguing, but Russell and Hind, between them, manage to capture the essence of its enigma.
Artist – see www.hollyslingsby.com
