Melanie King: Ancient Light

Blyth Gallery, Imperial College London
Level 5 Sherfield Building, Imperial College, Exhibition Rd, London SW7 5NH
Opening Party: Tuesday 9^th January 2018, 6-9pm
Exhibition Continues until 1st February 2018

Through the production of these artworks, King considers how light from incredibly distant stars can be captured directly onto photosensitive film. These photographs were captured on travels to dark sky areas, including Kielder Observatory in Northumberland, Dartmoor National Park and the Lumen Art Residency.

In this exhibition, Melanie encourages us to view the original negatives and corresponding silver gelatin prints from her Ancient Light series. To create these negatives, photons emitted from stars travel over millions of years through the void of space. The photon then travels through Earths’ atmosphere and through the camera lens, at which point the photon is physically absorbed by the silver halide crystals suspended in the film. When processed, the silver halide crystals turn black as they come into contact with developer and fixer. For Melanie, these negatives are as precious as a meteorite or fossil, as their material structure is formed by the passage of incomprehensible periods of time.

The solarised silver gelatin Moon image is a result from ongoing collaborative analogue photography experiments with Theo Schlichter, utilising the Fry telescope at the UCLO observatory in Mill Hill, London.

On Dartmoor comprises of four large scale digital photographs that were created spontaneously in absence of an analogue camera. The images are enlarged, and have been blown up to A0 size in order to provide the viewer with an immersive, dizzying experience when viewed up close.

Ancient Light was originally inspired by the “Envisioning The Universe” seminar at the National Maritime Museum. At this seminar academic Elizabeth Kessler explained how images from the Hubble Telescope are mediated before being published to the general public. Colours, crops and contrasts are added with sophisticated digital imaging techniques to communicate important features such as chemical composition of a star or structures of gas clouds of nebulae. These images aren’t objective, but neither are they subjective – curiously they sit somewhere in-between. Melanie was unsatisfied by the “constructed” nature of these images, and consequently began her own practice based research journey. In 2015, Melanie created photogravure prints of the Andromeda Galaxy, Moon, Earthrise and comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which were obtained from the NASA and ESA online archives. Using the subjective nature of mediated astronomical photographs as a starting point, Melanie was interested to find out how the materiality of the compressed carbon black ink and fine Hahnemuhle paper affects our reading of an astronomical image.

Overall, King’s practice enables her to better understand the phenomena of astronomy in a tangible material way. As part of her participatory practice, King teaches workshops on cyanotype, astrophotography and telescope handling. King also encourages others to look through telescopes and to visit dark sky spaces with super/collider pop-up astronomy events, inspiration trips to observatories and the Lumen art residency.