Exhibition Guide cover: Benedict Drew (b.1977, UK), Mainland Rock, 2014 (detail), HD video, 23 minutes, Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London beyond thescopeofnormalresearchgrants. and innovative;itenablesgreaterrisk-taking that isnot ‘more ofthesame’, buttrulyoriginal That programmeisdirectedtowardresearch Programme forthePhysicsofSustainability. research activitysupportedbythe Winton to buildonthecoreofinnovative ‘blue-skies’ industry objectives. There istheopportunity from bothnear-term butalsolong-term research inthephysicalsciences, developed Our objectivesaretocarryoutworld-leading research, developmentandmanufacturing. will begeneratedbytheassociatedindustrial An overalleconomicimpactwithintheUK commercial spaceonthe West Cambridgesite. in thecollaboratingDepartmentsand through theactivitiesinnewbuilding, involvement intheCentrewillbeincreased economic growth. The substantialindustrial activities withresearchobjectivesrelevantto adds valuebybringingtogether ‘blue skies’ ideas andresearcherspromotedbytheCentre and Technology Campus. The two-wayflowof and engineeringonthe West CambridgeScience industrial partnershipwiththephysicalsciences The Maxwell Centre isthecentrepiecefor Director, MaxwellCentre of Sustainability Director, Winton ProgrammeforthePhysics Cavendish ProfessorofPhysics Richard Friend Council CentresforDoctoral Training. Engineering andPhysicalSciencesResearch Research. Italsoprovidesthehubfortwo Royce Institutefor Advanced Materials to betheCambridgesiteofSirHenry ball bearingmanufacturerSKF, andisdue University Technology Centreandtheleading now hoststhepartnershipbetween engagement withtheUniversity. The building which willbeencouragedtoincreasetheir to smallandmedium-sizedenterprises, made availabletoindustryandparticularly characterisation andothersthatwillbe suite ofequipmentforadvancedmaterials We arecommissioningfacilitiessuchasthe space alongsidetheirUniversitycollaborators. from industryoccupylaboratoryanddesk In theMaxwellCentre, researchscientists INTO BOUNDLESS SPACE I LEAP

Science is an exploration of the unknown. My It is only since spending time at the Maxwell fascination with the thrill of not knowing is Centre that I have come to realise just what drew me to science. Where I discovered how much of the knowledge that we have that far from the realm of clinical predictability, about the world around us is down to the delving into scientific worlds is a journey of creative brilliance of our scientists and their heart-stopping unpredictability, where electrons uncompromising, unstoppable search for and atoms dance in mysterious patterns to answers. It is their curiosity that has led to the create astonishing physical phenomena. innovation that allows us to carry the internet in our pockets, communicate with the world This may sound as though I’m speaking of arts, at the touch of a button and explore every not science – but these realms are surprisingly corner of our vast planet. Their dreams allow similar in their passion, creativity, and search for us the chance to fulfill our dreams, faster. worlds beyond. This is what we are looking to convey through the synthesis of arts and science When Kettle’s Yard was invited by the Maxwell in our exhibition Into Boundless Space I Leap. Centre to curate a project that would help to Science is too often walled off, considered too celebrate the opening of this important new technical, incomprehensible, and the preserve building, we leapt at the opportunity. Like of specialists. The new Maxwell Centre is science, art has the power to change the way designed to make science more accessible, and its we see and interact with the world around us. boundaries more porous; to facilitate academic Whether it is through Hito Steyerl’s work that conversations with industry, interdisciplinary tests the impact of new technology on society, partnerships, and fluid interfaces between arts Laura Buckley’s beautiful studies of light, or and science. Maxwell conceived a world of Wayne McGregor and Haroon Mirza’s new invisible fields – where electricity, magnetism, performance that explores the body’s interaction and light waves interact as one with each with light and space; these artists each share other. Decades later, radio, TV, radar, and with their scientific counterparts that same mobile phones carry information via Maxwell’s tenacious curiosity and appetite for discovery. electromagnetic fields – a triumph of scientific imagination translated into technology. It is this appetite that drives artists to observe and interrogate their continually shifting Our exhibition is a celebration of scientific and surroundings, and to make work that invites us artistic discovery. The Cavendish Arts-Science to see the world differently. I believe that like Project partnership between scientists at the art, curiosity is something that is so important Maxwell Centre, curators at Kettle’s Yard, and to being human that it can, and should, be collaborating artists, has proved an exciting shared by all. exploration of each other’s worlds. We hope that it gives you a glimpse of those worlds too, and ignites your scientific curiosity and Guy Haywood imagination – to see further, and dream bigger. Curator of Into Boundless Space I Leap Kettle’s Yard

Suchitra Sebastian Director, Cavendish Arts-Science Project Maxwell Centre, Department of Physics 14A 15 13 11 14B 12 10

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1 2 3 FACILITIES There are two facility areas on each floor with toilets, stairs and lift. Rana Begum (b.1977, Bangladesh) Mark Titchner (b.1973, UK) 1 No.657 LFold, 2016, paint on mirror finish 3 Let Old Words New Truth Inspire, 2016, stainless steel printed vinyl No.659 LFold, 2016, paint on stainless steel Courtesy the artist and Vilma Gold, London Courtesy the artist and Galerie Christian Mark Titchner has created a new graphic text Lethert, Cologne work especially for the Maxwell Centre, which Rana Begum’s sculptures are displayed on the is displayed on the surface beneath the feature high wall of the entrance space to the Maxwell staircase. Taking a phrase from James Clerk Centre and are visible from each floor. Taking Maxwell’s extensive poetic writings, Titchner inspiration from the colliding colours, shapes presents a mantra-like text that chimes with the and patterns that make up the built environment Centre’s culture of cutting-edge creative thought around us, Begum’s ‘folds’ appear deceptively and the persistent search for answers. Let Old light, like paper origami sculptures, but are Words New Truth Inspire suggests the emergence made from folded pieces of stainless steel. These of novel scientific ideas and discoveries from the geometric forms interact with the spaces in which fabric of enduring scientific principles. they are displayed – ambient light bounces from their brightly coloured, highly polished surfaces, Paul Purgas (b.1980, UK) deflecting colour onto their surroundings. As the 4 Source/Cell/Magnitude, 2016, live viewer moves around the sculptures their shapes transmission equipment, directional speaker are further activated as the surfaces intersect with Courtesy the artist one another and create new colours. This new experimental sound piece explores the ubiquitous nature of electromagnetic waves. Wayne McGregor (b.1970, UK) and Haroon Purgas uses a series of special microphones that 2 Mirza (b.1977, UK) have been connected to scientific equipment in A new commission choreographed by Wayne the Maxwell Centre’s basement laboratories. McGregor and performed by Jason Mabana These translate electromagnetic fields directly and Julia Anna Sattler into audible sound. The broadcast is transmitted Haroon Mirza, Transverse Waves for Wayne live from the new quantum materials laboratories (Solar Symphony 10), 2016, photovoltaic in the basement of the building on the FM radio panel, van door, speakers, electronics, LEDs frequency 89.2. Directional speakers activate the Courtesy hrm199 Ltd sound as visitors ascend the staircase. Film by Ravi Deepres (b.1969, UK) In this new commission, choreographer Wayne Laura Buckley (b.1977, Dublin) McGregor and artist Haroon Mirza explore the 5 White Light Waves 1, 2016, C-type print body, sound and space. The interactions between White Light Waves 2, 2016, C-type print these creative forms physically embody the Courtesy the artist, with thanks to Wysing Maxwell Centre’s ethos of creative exploration Arts Centre and pioneering experimentation. This is the Made by Laura Buckley at the Cavendish artists’ second collaborative work to combine Laboratory in March 2016, these prints form the light, sound and movement. The dancers’ bodies most recent part of a body of work that she has activate the sculptural soundscape that is created been developing since 2012. Buckley manipulates through the connecting elements of solar panels, objects, materials and surfaces on top of a electricity and light sources. photographic scanner whilst shining light back The work will be performed live on 9 April. into its beam. She creates abstract, experimental Thereafter, a film of the performance will be images that not only challenge the technology viewable in the atrium space; the film is a creative but also offer a new way of seeing around, collaboration between McGregor, Mirza and through and in between materials. These new British artist and filmmaker Ravi Deepres. works were created by ‘scanning’ one of James Clerk Maxwell’s glass shapes, a cross, which Ulyana Gumenuik (b.1975, Ukraine) he used for studying light transmission through 8 Elements 1.1 (Iron), 2016, oil and graphite glass that was subjected to different levels of on canvas pressure. These glass shapes are displayed in the Courtesy the artist cabinets on the top floor. Ulyana Gumenuik was previously a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Benedict Drew (b.1977, UK) Cambridge. Her new painting brings together her 6 Mainland Rock, 2014, HD video, 23 mins wide-ranging interests from the highly symbolic Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London Vanitas genre of still life painting (from the 16th Benedict Drew’s vivid films and sprawling and 17th centuries), to the study of patterns in installations interrogate the relationship between nature, and the concept of increasing entropy the digital and material worlds. Mainland Rock in the universe and the inevitable descent from was made in 2014, during Drew’s residency at order to disorder studied by Maxwell. Gumeniuk the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. is interested in the potential for the artist’s Drew builds a sense of disorientation and hand to both prescribe information and be the alienation as the viewer is moved through the facilitator of its disintegration. imposing concrete walls of a modern building in this three-part film. The work examines the Fischli/Weiss (b.1952 and 1946-2012, ways in which the built environment, ongoing 9 Switzerland) technological development and hyperconnectivity The Way Things Go, 1987, 16mm film is fundamentally altering the way in which we transferred to DVD, 30 minutes see, experience and relate to the world around us. Courtesy the artists and T&C Film, Zurich PLEASE NOTE: this film contains flashing images as This iconic film by artists Peter Fischli and David well as two instances of strong language and is not Weiss follows a captivating thirty-minute chain suitable for younger viewers. reaction where mundane objects from pots and pans to car tyres, bottles and balloons collide and Gustav Metzger (b.1926, Germany) activate one another, aided by the laws of gravity, 7 Light Drawing, 2014, unique photograph fire and explosions. We see materials interact and on paper energy transfer in a scene that appears chaotic Private collection. Courtesy the artist yet is, in fact, ordered and choreographed with For his major exhibition LIFT OFF! at Kettle’s painstaking precision. Yard in 2014, Metzger created a series of unique photographic works. These Light Drawings Edward Wilson (1872-1912, UK) were made using a fibre-optic light source that 10 Untitled sketches of the aurora australis, Metzger suspended from the ceiling of a dark c.1901, chalk on paper (posthumous room, allowing him to create gestural marks on reproductions 2016) sheets of photosensitive paper laid out across Courtesy the Scott Polar Research Institute, a table. The nature of the marks revealed, after University of Cambridge development, was entirely dependent on the Dr. Edward Wilson was an explorer, medical movement of the light source as directed by doctor and artist who accompanied Captain the artist. Therefore these marks not only record Robert Falcon Scott on his ambitious Antarctic light but also movement and time. expeditions aboard the Discovery ship (1901- 04) and later the Terra Nova (1910-13). Wilson was appointed as the official artist to record these expeditions. He created these chalk sketches during the expeditions as part of ongoing scientific observations made during the Discovery expedition. The sketches document the spectacular displays of the Aurora Australis, second floor. Having shown a keen interest as or Southern Lights, a shimmering light effect a child, Maxwell improved on earlier zoetrope that arises from electromagnetic forces. The designs by substituting the usual viewing slits descent of charged solar wind particles that for lenses, and later used them to demonstrate follow magnetic field lines toward the Earth’s scientific ideas. poles appear as dancing lights in the night sky. Nano^Art Project James Clerk Maxwell’s Instruments 14 Courtesy the participants and artists 11 Courtesy the Cavendish Laboratory Collection The Nano^Art project was set up in 2015 by Some of the instruments that were originally the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in designed, made and used by James Clerk Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC) Maxwell during his time in Cambridge are to bring together artists and scientists to engage displayed in three glass cabinets. The objects in creative investigations at the ‘nanoscale’, a include his famous colour slides that together scale so small that the atomistic characteristics made up the first ever colour photographic image, of materials are made visible. Through working developed with photographer Thomas Sutton in at this scale scientists and artists are able to 1861. Many of these objects were fundamental study materials and interactions that are very to groundbreaking developments in the physical far from everyday human experience. Making sciences. Find out more in the captions that Sense of Matter, 2016, by artist Melissa accompany each object. Murray considers how we imagine interacting nanoparticles as clouds of matter, models of Issam Kourbaj (b.1963, Syria) mathematics. Displayed in the adjacent vitrine 12 New Camera Obscura photographs, 2016, is the book typoaktionen, 1967, made by poet c-type prints and typographer Hansjörg Mayer in 1967 and Courtesy the artist alongside it are two works exploring ‘random Issam Kourbaj has created a new set of superimpositions of binary code’ made by photographs using a camera obscura (Latin doctoral researcher Jasmine Rivett in 2016. for ‘dark room’). The optical device uses a More outcomes and information on the hole (or lens in this case) to project an image Nano^Art project can be viewed in the of its surroundings into a darkened box; the NanoDTC research area on the 2nd floor at image appears inverted due to the travel of 14A and 14B. light in straight lines. Kourbaj’s atmospheric images record some of the activity that takes Hito Steyerl (b.1966, Germany) place in the Maxwell Centre’s laboratories 15 Strike, 2010, HD video, 28 seconds, and working spaces, ranging from Maxwell’s edition of 5, with 2 APs historic instruments to the study of light and Courtesy the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, development of new superconducting materials New York by contemporary scientists. Strike documents a short, shock action. The artist, Hito Steyerl, calmly approaches a Eugenio Polgovsky (b.1977, Mexico) flat-screen television and strikes it with a 13 Lightbyrinth, 2016, HD video hammer and chisel. This simple but unexpected Courtesy the artist sequence of events immediately exposes the Experimental filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky is material substructure behind the images that currently Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts surround us at home, at work, and in the street. at Trinity College, Cambridge. His new work In Steyerl’s title the word Strike is ambiguous intimately examines some of Maxwell’s early and implies disruption. Her film invites us to moving image devices, including his zoetrope, reflect on the increasing interdependence of which is also displayed in the cases on the global society and technology. INTO BOUNDLESS SPACE I LEAP – James Clerk Maxwell

New Art, Dance and Science Interacting at the Maxwell Centre

9 April — 2 July 2016 Thanks to: The artists, dancers, staff at Kettle’s Yard and the Maxwell Centre. Special thanks to Malcolm Longair, Department of Physics and This exhibition is a collaboration between Andrew Nairne, Director, Kettle’s Yard. the Maxwell Centre and Kettle’s Yard Thanks also go to Mete Atatüre, Emily Challis, Conceived by Cavendish Arts-Science Project, Tijmen Euser, Richard Friend, Leona Hope-Coles, directed by Suchitra Sebastian, Maxwell Centre, Peter Norman, Andy Parker, David Rudderham, Department of Physics Rob Stockill at the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge; Valerie Gibson, Jean Exhibition curated by Guy Haywood, Khalfa, Rory Landman, Keith Moffat, Martin Kettle’s Yard Rees, and the entire fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge; Claudio Castelnovo, Ulyana Gumeniuk, Wayne McGregor / Haroon Mirza commission Karishma Jain, and Agnieszka Iwasiewicz-Wabnig curated by Jennifer Powell, Kettle’s Yard at Cavendish Arts-Science Project; Naomi Boneham, Charlotte Connelly and Lucy Martin at the Scott Project organisation by Nalin Patel, Polar Research Institute; Ben Barwise and Alice Maxwell Centre Hackney at Haroon Mirza Studio; Emma Gifford- Mead and Greg Hilty at Lisson Gallery, London; Ellie Douglas-Allan and Polly Hunt at Studio Wayne McGregor; Ravi Deepres and Luke Unsworth; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne; Matt’s Gallery, London; T&C Film, Zurich; Vilma Gold, London; Donna Lynas Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s and Chelsea Pettitt at Wysing Arts Centre; Jonny London Gallery, minutes, Courtesy the artist and Matt’s 23 modern and contemporary art gallery. It is Aldous at Provincial Frames; David Chapman currently closed during the completion of a at The Royal Society; Dane Comerford, Public major building project. Engagement, University of Cambridge; Concorde Graphics, London; Elizabeth Fisher; Rob Filby; kettlesyard.co.uk/maxwell Melissa Franklin at Harvard University; John (detail), HD video, 2014

Lancaster at the Fitzwilliam Museum; Jessica Mailey , at BDP; Merritt Moore at University of Oxford; Design by Paul Allitt Tom Noblett; Karina O’Gorman at L’Oreal UK

& Ireland; Christian Rauch at STATE Experience Mainland Rock Science Festival; Tony Window at Metro Imaging. , UK), 1977

TRINITY COLLEGE

CAMBRIDGE (b. Benedict Drew cover: