Leeds art installation helps children grapple with fourth spatial dimension
It is unlikely the children clambering over the world’s first 4D climbing frame had any idea they were helping to explore higher dimensional geometry, irregular polytopes or string theoretical physics – but they unquestionably had fun.
“They loved it and my kids are coming tomorrow so I’m very excited,” said Gemma Anderson-Tempini, an artist, after road testing her climbing frame with Leeds youngsters before school started on Thursday.
“For me this is a dream come true because it has been almost impossible to make. As a climbing experience it’s very different to what people will have tried, there are all these interesting angles and ways to twist around,” she added.
The frame is in the front garden of a huge, empty Victorian house in Leeds that Anderson-Tempini has transformed into a kind of string theory playground. There are drawings and installations in different rooms that are challenging but accessible and all exploring the scientific theory of the fourth spatial dimension, an ideathat was popularised in the 19th century by Charles Howard Hinton and other mathematicians.
Hinton also made a climbing frame, which he used to teach his children about maths. His son Sebastian, who later patented the Jungle Gym, recalled fond memories of his father commanding: “X2, Y4, Z3, Go!”
Anderson-Tempini’s frame and other works in the house play on that history. The installation, And She Built a Crooked House, has been created after years of working with Alessio Corti, professor of pure mathematics at Imperial College London.
But what is the fourth spatial dimension? “Well we know about length, width and depth,” says a spirit world voice in a room set up for a seance, “the fourth dimension is an extension of this … beyond what our senses can perceive.”
Of course, there is a lot more to it but the hope is that people ignorant
of the fourth spatial dimension might have some idea by the time they leave. Or even if they do not, they will have had fun trying to understand the idea.
Another room is accessed only through a Narnia-like wardrobe of coats. Inside it is a remarkable mirrored infinity room with piles of laundry and a soundtrack of the artist singing to her three-year-old twins.
Motherhood is another central part of Anderson-Tempini’s show because she regularly feels as if she needs to be in two places at once while raising her young twins.
“You do feel like a wormhole would be really handy,” she said. “It’s that feeling in parenting where you are stretched to your limits and then feel you are being turned inside out.”
The installation in Headingley is part of the year of culture in Leeds and has been commissioned by Artangel, the adventurous organisation that takes pride in presenting art in unexpected places, whether Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave or Michael Landy destroying everything he owned.
It is the first Artangel commission for its director, Mariam Zulfiqar, who succeeded James Lingwood and Michael Morris in 2022.
Zulfiqar said Anderson-Tempini produces thought provoking work that is complex and accessible.
“This is a topic, an area of inquiry that actually has been quite profound in its impact on society. But yet we don’t know that much about it. How is that possible? That’s why I’m so excited for this show to be happening.”
• And She Built a Crooked House is at Burton Grange, 17 Burton Crescent, Leeds LS6 4DN, 20 October to 28 January
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