CRITIC’S CHOICE

Our relationship with space, in all contexts, is explored here in the pin-drop quiet of Ingleby’s contemplative new space at the former Glasite Meeting House in Edinburgh. George Melies’ seminal 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune catches the eye, all movement amid the still, full of imaginative leaps. Jumpy aliens are dispatched with that ancient marker of great civilisations, the umbrella.

Nearby, Alicja Kwade’s rock installation Stellar Day is the essence of still, revolving imperceptibly in the opposite direction to the Earth, creating by default “the stillest thing on Earth” – although it’s all relative, as full of holes as Melies’ Moon. Katie Paterson’s thought-provoking works include a melted down meteorite, recast to its original form (Campo del Cielo, Field of the Sky) alongside Cornelia Parker’s suggestive Einstein’s Abstracts, expressive, unidentifiable close-ups of the chalk marks made during Einstein’s lecture on relativity at Oxford.

There are Nasa prints taken from the Moon and historic contemplations of Earth’s satellite in the form of James Nasmyth and James Carpenter’s 1874 book. There is Marine Hugonnier’s Moon Landing-era newspapers, the Glasgow Herald included, silk-screening out the iconic images. Thin as a wisp, Peter Liversidge’s From Home is an installation of a tape measure held upright with monofilament pulled out to the exact measurement that the Moon has moved away from the Earth since the

Moon landing in1969. Under

Liversidge’s instructions, the tape will be pulled out incrementally each year for the duration of the installation: 1,000 years.

Jacob’s Ladder is presented in tandem with an exhibition in Edinburgh University’s Central Library in George Square, Astronomy Victorius, a showing of historic manuscripts on cosmography and the Moon, alongside works such as Katie Paterson’s wonderful Timepieces, showing the time on all the planets of the solar system and our Moon.

Jacob’s Ladder, Ingleby Gallery, 33 Barony Street, Edinburgh, 0131 556 4441, www.inglebygallery.com, until 20 Oct, Mon-Sat, 11am-5pm