NGCA Visit: Fiona Crisp

Fiona Crisp's exhibition 'Material Sight' is a series of large scale photographs and video works made possible by her collaboration with other disciplines and research facilities. These particular works are photos from 'The Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso,' the world's largest underground laboratory for particle physics. This exhibition explores how we might encounter spaces where the frontiers of knowledge are pushed back. Across all these sites, knowledge is pursued at scales and distances beyond our human sensing, from the macro scale of the multiverse to the micro scale of the sub-atomic world. In Material Sight, Crisp explores how we might counter this sensory remoteness, not through a documentary narrative but by being placed into a physical, tangible relation to the spaces and laboratories where the science is performed; to this end Crisp builds a landscape of image and sound, augmenting the gallery architecture with scaffolding walls that support a cycle of eight large-scale photographs accompanied by four moving image works.

This exhibition was different but interesting, I enjoyed the way the exhibition was displayed in particular, I liked that the photos and videos were hung by scaffolding, this was intriguing as you normally have things on a wall within a gallery space, so it was refreshing to see something different. The scaffolding gave a sculptural feel to the exhibition, it felt as if i was in an underground laboratory. The videos were interesting, I spent a while watching each one, it was unusual to have them on the inside and outside of the scaffolding framework, I liked that it made you walk around the entire space to view all of the artwork on display.