These photographs, in their different ways, allude to the complex ways in which art and science co-exist, sometimes sharing a single vision while at others occupying a much more ambivalent and uncertain dialogue.
In unnatural histories, Paul Kilsby stages meticulously constructed tableaux using taxidermy specimens; we see night time encounters with birds as the predators and ‘wrong’ insects as their prey. This series of images creates a critique of the ‘nature-as-spectacle’ genre of television documentaries made famous by David Attenborough. Kilsby’s fictions share the exaggerated aesthetic of the genre with their larger-than-life detail. However, these images don’t pretend to be authentic and his strategy calls into question the ostensible ‘truth’ such heavily-edited and contrived television series purport to convey.
In geometria, Kilsby explores the belief held by many in the West since the time of Plato that underpinning reality are certain timeless mathematical shapes and structures. We see this, famously, in the Golden ratio and the Fibonacci series as manifest in certain flowers and seashells, for example, and employed in the compositions of Piero della Francesca and Raphael. In some degree, science, at least until the time of Newton, seemed to corroborate these ideas. Kilsby’s photographs explore these beliefs in fundamental mathematical order, structure and equilibrium – but also fragility, precariousness and jeopardy, obliquely alluding to the crises we are facing in the Anthropocene.
This exhibition is proud to be part of this year’s Oxford Science and Ideas Festival
Exhibition Opening
Tuesday 1 October 2024 6-8pm
Please join us to welcome in this new exhibition.
Free event / no booking required
In Conversation
Monday 14 October 6.30 – 8pm
Paul Kilsby will be in conversation with James Attlee, author and Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Paul’s series of images explore the intricate relationship between art and science. James is the author of Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey (2007), Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (2011), Station to Station: Searching for Stories on the Great Western Line (2015, shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year) and Guernica: Painting the End of the World (2017) among other titles, as well as numerous essays, chapters and newspaper articles, mainly concerning art and books. His digital fiction The Cartographer’s Confession, free to download from the App Store and Google Play, won the if: book award for New Media Writing in 2017. He has worked in publishing for over two decades, including 10 years at Tate Publishing in London.
Family workshop
Saturday 19 October 1.30 – 3.30pm
Make a Fibonacci spiral, drawing from sunflowers, or an infinite Moebius strip from paper, etc. Play with geometry and other areas of mathematics to create your captivating art to take home.
