We are thrilled to announce our first exhibition opening for 2022. Join us to immerse yourself in Loz Atkinson’s ‘The Edge of Forever’, in a exploration of our known and unknown universe to discover who we are.
A Leicester-based artist, Loz has been exhibiting her work for more than 12 years across the UK, Europe, America, and beyond. Self-described as ‘concept-driven’, she often feels compelled to return to ideas again and again as to explore them from new angles and perspectives. Through this way of working, she has amassed a body of thematically grouped work over the course of many years working across paint, installation work, and digital media.
Loz’s newest exhibition, ‘The Edge of Forever’, draws inspiration from Carl Sagan’s thirteen-part television series ‘Cosmos: A Personal Voyage’ (1980), as it brings together key works from her ‘Imagined Nebula’ series which began its life as an outlet for her increasing interest in exploring the relationship we humans have with the universe at large. Since 2015, the work has grappled with the idea of how to represent something so vast as the universe, when it is impossible to truly measure or understand. Fundamentally, the work places the subject as within the universe itself while trying to unravel its very being. The paintings within this work portray scenes of an imaginary cosmos, complete with starry constellations and jewel-coloured nebulae.
Paintings from this body of work have travelled far and wide: some digitally ‘bounced’ off the Moon, while another piece currently is travelling through outer space on the NASA probe, OSIRIS-REx. However, as part of ‘The Edge of Forever’ a new body of work will be displayed to the public alongside the paintings titled ‘The Cosmos Within’. Consisting of 12 life-sized anatomical models of the human brain, each model has been painted with different coloured nebulae, which are huge clouds of gas and dust that give form and life to everything on Earth. Loz has chosen these colours to represent the 12 traceable elements that make up the human body, which are found both in vast and unfathomable cosmic phenomena as well as the tiniest microscopic particles and forces that hold everything together. The exhibition is sure to push our perspectives on our own standing within the known universe, and question our creation within it, as Carl Sagan said:
“Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” – Carl Sagan
A visionary body of work to be exhibited within Gallery 2 between the 22nd Jan – 27th March, within an exhibition launch taking place of the 21st Jan, 5pm-7pm. Explore our ‘What’s On’ tab to voyage into our other amazing exhibitions, and join us to open your mind to the realities and impossibilities that make up our universe and ourselves.