EASTBOURNE.- Towner Art Gallery presents We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun, a new exhibition curated by internationally acclaimed artist Haroon Mirza with works from the Arts Council Collection, and interventions orchestrated by the artist and his studio hrm199, tracing the connections between them.

Using electricity as his main medium, Mirza creates atmospheric environments by intuitively linking light, sound, music and film with elements of architecture. Drawing together a variety of media to explore how our fantasies about the future and understanding of the past determine our experience of ‘the now’. Rather than providing an answer, Mirza’s chosen works are intended to trigger reflection and individual interpretation.

The title We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun draws on the circular symbolism inspired by astral bodies such as the Moon and the Sun. With its powerful significance in ancient rituals, nature, cycles of physical phenomena, the circle is a continuing theme in Mirza’s own research. The exhibition is curated as a kind of spiraling, cyclical narrative, testing the friction and relationship between artworks in a choreographed visual soundscape.

Central to We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun are Dining Recess (1972) and Sculpture in Landscape (1966), two paintings by Patrick Caulfield that imagine disparate, nondescript exterior and interior spaces empty of human presence or trace. A large circular lamp dominates the centre of Dining Recess like a hanging moon; almost an hallucinatory vision, suggesting something that has either happened or is about to happen. Sculpture in Landscape depicts a relic-like object in a lunar landscape, reminiscent of Barbara Hepworth’s geometric and circular forms.

In turn, George Barber’s low tech ‘cut-up’ video Arts Council GB Scratch juxtaposes abstract sculptural work by artists such as Carl Andre and Anthony Caro with animated geometric shapes such as the now defunct logo for the old Arts Council of Great Britain and those borrowed from the visual language of contemporary video games.

Dresden Dynamo, Liz Rhodes’ film is a powerful experimental work exploring the connection between images and sound. Dots, stripes and wavy lines surge across the screen, created by fragments of tape attached to the 16mm film, their forms dictating the accompanying barrage of white noise and atonal bleeps.

Jonathan Monk’s slide installation and wall painting Blue without Hidden Noise (version 1), 2003 (from the Towner Collection), references twentieth century art history, inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s With Hidden Noise and Douglas Heubler’s Duration Piece #5, New York. Monk’s slide installation projects a winter scene onto a ball wall, as though seen through binoculars, or a lunar lens, causing all the blue in the image to vanish.

Similar optical effects are explored in Peter Sedgley’s Corona, 1970, a painted series of coloured concentric circles, illuminated in sequence, to create a psychedelic optical sensation.

In Tacita Dean’s video, The Green Ray, 2001, (also from the Towner Collection), the last rays of the setting sun refract below the line of the horizon, momentarily producing the greenish glow often described in sailors’ tales. For Dean, seeking and eventually finding this elusive event became about the act of looking itself, and the faith and belief in the possibilities of what we see.

Jill Constantine, Director of Arts Council Collection, said "We're delighted that Haroon Mirza has curated such an exceptional and innovative exhibition. Taking us away from the conventional museum hang, the show challenges us to rethink how works of art can be displayed, re-utilized and re-interpreted in new and dynamic ways."

Artists featured in We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun are:
George Barber, Patrick Caulfield, Tacita Dean, Peter Fend, Anthony Hill, James Hugonin, Ian Kiaer, Mark Leckey, Jonathan Monk, Seamus Nicolson, Lis Rhodes, Peter Sedgley, William Tucker, Andrew Williams, Richard Wilson, Rose Wylie.

Curated by Haroon Mirza, We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun is the fourth exhibition selected by Towner from the Arts Council Collection for the National Partners Programme following A Green and Pleasant Land; Now, Today, Tomorrow and Always; A Certain Kind of Light, and the presentation of the Arts Council Collection’s own touring exhibition, One Day Something Happens.

We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun is accompanied by a text written by Matilde Cerruti Quara.