Studied Natures - Exhibition

51°10’ N, 115°34’ W - 6:31pm - 12th June 2007 (part of middle panel)

Studied Natures – Kirsten Bradley
16th August - 8th September 2007
Opening 16th August, 6pm

Westspace Gallery
Level 1, 15 - 19 Anthony Street
Melbourne, Australia


Studied Natures examines perceptions of nature and simulation through photography, timelapse animation and camera obscura. Ever Rotating Sky (51°10’ N, 115°34’ W) is the first suite in a series of works which attempt to grapple a tiny bit with perceptions of the ‘natural world’, landscape and ‘the grand view’ within our culture. Kirsten’s first solo exhibition is an installation comprising three single-channel digital animations, sound, and a suite of photographs. Sound: veðurathugan - Ben Frost [remixing Steinbrüchel]

Many thanks to the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, the Australia Council for the Arts, and the National Association for Visual Artists for their support.

video here of a similar work using same technique + parameters...

Room Sheet for exhibition:

Ever Rotating Sky (51°10’ N, 115°34’ W) is the first suite in a series of works which attempt to grapple a tiny bit with perceptions of the ‘natural world’, landscape and ‘the grand view’ within our culture. What do we perceive as natural? How is that changing? In a world out of balance, it is perhaps within the membranes between the organic and the simulated forms of ‘nature’ that answers to important questions lie.

Ever Rotating Sky (51°10’ N, 115°34’ W) chronicles the passing of three successive days in the Bow Valley of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Using an accurate star chart of the night sky for that season and place on earth, a star field of pinholes are transferred to a sheet of card, which is placed against a large, west-facing exterior window. The light from these pinholes, projected onto a paper screen inside the room, results in an array of camera obscura images of the outside mountain scene, arranged in the pattern of the constellations above.

Over the course of these three days, from dawn until dusk, the light upon the screen is recorded at a rate of one image every 20 seconds. These images have then been collated in series to create a unique time-lapse document in high definition digital video. Tiny, multiple and ever-changing views of rainstorms, mountains, cloudbanks and sunlight all merge over the course of the day to create an abstract universe. Ever Rotating Sky… aims to explore ways of approaching landscape and the circadian rhythms of the everyday, employing time, motion and what has always been there.

Utilizing simple, in-camera techniques, I wanted, with this piece, to consider aspects of nature and landscape, our relationship to it, and our perception of it – and where nature melds into a simulation of itself – and when we care (or notice) – and when we don’t. This piece therefore centres on looking at aspects of ‘real’ and simulated natures, and what constitutes which on a variety of levels, from perceptions of abstract ‘lifelike’ or ‘natural’ motion through to the theoretical boundaries of what constitutes the natural.

My intention is to sift through some of these questions in the form of work which addresses the murky boundaries between these two natures in new ways. Working primarily with the organic, I am seeking to explore perceptions of what constitutes natural motion, natural form, and natural vistas through animation and time-lapse. I want to construct views of parallel natures, by use of the natural, and see if they can exist independently as a ‘truthful’ nature, which not what it is, but which the eye and the heart see as an admittedly parallel, but nonetheless accepted, nature unto its self.

Kirsten Bradley’s work deals primarily with landscapes - urban, natural, sonic, constructed and imagined. Her current interests are centred in sociological histories of the landscape, and the murky waters between the organic and simulated within our perceptions of nature and wilderness. Working primarily as one-third of artist collective Cicada she has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and a little bit overseas including projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and the Govett-Brewster, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ben Frost is a composer, a producer, an artist of sorts and could possibly be described by various other stupid titles. He was born in Melbourne Australia in 1980. He lives in Reykjavik Iceland, eats well, sleeps well, likes holding hands and is, generally speaking... happy.