New visual arts exhibition aims to go out of this world

Aug 12 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

A NEW visual arts installation celebrating Galileo’s invention of the telescope is to open at World Museum Liverpool, in September, and run throughout the Biennial.

Based in the museum’s Planetarium, Maybe in the Sky is an art piece comprising of two moving image works by artists Lily Markiewicz and Anne Robinson, specifically designed to use the Planetarium’s dome as both an exhibition space and a site in which to explore the nature of time, space and reality.

The series of thought- provoking experiences aims to engage audiences with the shocking reverberations of Galileo’s invention of the telescope 400 years ago and its revolutionary after-effects.

Describing the works, the artists said: “Our artworks are a reflection of Galileo’s scientific revelations, which challenged the prevailing belief systems and introduced what was perceived to be a ‘heretic’ view of the universe and our place in it.”

Markiewicz and Robinson continue: “We use the telescope and moving images to explore how memory and ‘new’ technologies influence and determine our perceptions, enabling us to echo some of the concerns that engaged Galileo and his contemporaries about the workings of the universe and our relationship with it. The artwork’s location in the Planetarium positions the works somewhere between playful curiosity and serious scholarship, bringing contemporary art into an environment conventionally dedicated to science.”

* MAYBE in the Sky will be showing at scheduled times in the Planetarium, at World Museum Liverpool, from September 20 until November 9.