Opening exhibition delves into ‘invisibility of science’
The Twenty Four Seven programme was launched on the same day as the unveiling of the new home for the National Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA).
The oldest contemporary art gallery in the region, NGCA had been based in Fawcett Street until the City Library and Arts Centre closed.
Now, former workshop space at the National Glass Centre has been converted to permanently house the NGCA, adding to the existing galleries at the glass centre.
The inaugural exhibition at the new NGCA is Material Sight by Fiona Crisp, which will run from this weekend until May 13.
The display features footage and photographs from Fiona’s time spent at scientific spaces not open to the public: Boulby Underground Laboratory near Whitby, Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology and Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, the world’s largest underground laboratory for particle physics, housed inside a mountain in Italy.
The artist said: “Material Space is the result of an intense research project with three different world leaders in their field for fundamental science.
“I’m not a scientist, but I was interested in the fields of science which are difficult for lay people to get their head around.
“The sites are not accessible to the public, such as the Boulby site, which is a mile underground, and the laboratory in Italy in a mountain, which is like something out of James Bond. I found a paradox between the physicality of the spaces and the invisibility of the science.”