THE REVIEW: exhibition
By Lynsey Ford
OTHERWORLDS Exhibition Details Dates 15 May 2016 Venue Address Natural HIstory Museum, South Kensington, London Opening Times Sun – Sat 10am–5:50pm Entry Price Adult £9.90, Child and concession £5.40
Man has always had a deep fascination with space, from the great sixties ‘space race’ between the Soviets and the Americans through to Captain Tim Peake’s current six month mission across the hemisphere with The European Space Agency (ESA). So what better time to celebrate the beauty of the cosmos? Artist and Curator Michael Benson’s exhibition Otherworlds, showcases at The Natural History Museum documenting 77 NASA/ESA images taken from space missions. Extracting raw data from space agency material and manipulating these images into vibrant colour, Benson guides us into a monochrome and Technicolor journey across the Solar System in the darkly lit Jerwood Gallery. One can experience a collection of extraordinary geological formations including images of Pluto taken from the New Horizon spacecraft in Summer 2015. Further images from seven successful landers capture the desolate rust red beacon of Mars, and one can also marvel at the splendour of the Sun’s 4.6 billion year old fiery plasma.
Above: Crescent Jupiter & Ganymede 2001 © NASA/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy of Flowers Gallery
The collection benefits from the extensive four year project of the NASA Mangellan Spacecraft, which projected a succession of radar signals through the deep, penetrating atmosphere of Venus. Two of the loveliest images are Moonlight on the Adriatic, a tribute to the glistening view of southern Europe, with the merging of the Italian peninsula into the Mediterranean Sea. Another is Crescent Jupiter and Ganymede, which perfectly encapsulates the mystery of Jupiter’s largest moon, peeking out upon the horizon, formed from water ice. Brian Eno’s original soundtrack of synthesisers blends seamlessly throughout the exhibition, capturing the ethereal quality of the solar system in all its glory. Otherworlds : Visions of our Solar System a fitting legacy to man’s technological endeavour in space exploration, and it is a perfect fusion of art meeting science.
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