Cosmic Titans, Lakeside, 2025
I was extremely excited to go and see this exhibition because I am interested in quantum physics. So naturally I left going until the week before it closed.
The show included work from nine artists who had collaborated with scientists globally, observing their laboratories and connecting with their research. I really like this marrying of art and science; two subjects that help us to imagine, perceive and make sense of our realties in both different and similar ways.
My favourite works were created collaboratively by artist and researcher Daniela Brill Estrada, and transdisciplinary artist Monica C LoCasio.
LoCasio's work focuses on the materiality of invisible phenomena, generating artifacts of her material and theoretical research on memory, microbiology, theoretical physics, and hierarchies of knowledge and power. She pairs fermented bio-materials, salvaged fiber, and heritage craft techniques with industrial and salvaged materials to examine the tension between the fluidity and vulnerability of the lived human experience and the systems and institutions that contrast it.
Eastrada's creative process is deeply inspired by the origins of life research, astrobiology, and the trajectories of different chemical elements, particularly carbon.
I loved how the work combined their residencies with the context of the exhibition, drawing on Nottingham's rich textile history by including vibrant mesmerising webbed tunnels, made from locally sourced antique wool, to try and represent spacetime curvature around black holes.
I also really enjoyed the inverted tree sculptures in the grounds of the Lakeside centre. I had somewho missed them during my visits in recent years. I researched the work and discovered they are called, "Eurydice Prevails", and were created by Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva in 2019. The two Elm trees, placed upside down, with their roots reaching the sky. The trees were sustainably sourced from University Park Campus, having been felled due to poor health. Elpida worked with University students, staff and members of the public to make the work using the ancient Japanese process of Yakisugi, a method of wood preservation achieved through the charring of the surface. The trees were then overlaid with decorative metallic motifs that trace the tunnel-like galleries created by Elm bark beetles, the carriers of Dutch Elm disease that is estimated to have killed and affected 25 million Elm trees since the 1960s. In Eurydice Prevails, Elpida has imagined a rewriting of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In her version of events the heroine, unlike in the ancient Greek legend, successfully escapes Hades despite Orpheus’ backward glance.
