Between buildings as between stars
Curated by Amber Koroluk-Stephenson
Schoolhouse Gallery, Rosny Farm Arts Centre, lutriwita/Tasmania
25 October - 17 November 2024
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Devonport Regional Gallery, Upper Gallery, lutriwita/Tasmania
22 February - 10 May 2025
Between buildings as between stars
Andy Hutson
Alicia King
Georgia Lucy
Kate Marshall
Ali Noble
Meg Walch
Grace Wood
Between buildings as between stars explores the intersections between the known tangibility of material worlds and spaces that are unknown, mysterious, fictitious, or speculative.
Drawing on the popular modern paraphrase, ‘as above, so below’, from the medieval Hermetic text of the Emerald Tablet, this exhibition delves into the human desire to uncover meaning and understanding, in physical spaces of personal and collective experience, as well as spaces that are out of reach or yet to be revealed.
This exhibition acts as a meditation on notions of wonder, alluding to material and imagined forces of the body, alchemy, science, the occult, cosmology, technology and art history. Together, the artists explore realms of uncharted territory and those that echo familiarities and imaginaries of the everyday.
Catalogue essay by Lucy Hawthorne
Tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracle of one only thing. And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
– excerpt from Isaac Newton’s translation of the Emerald Tablet. [1]
The phrase “as above, so below” — a source of inspiration for this exhibition — comes from a translation of an ancient Hermetic text, the Emerald Tablet. Considered an elemental text by Islamic and European alchemists, the tablet has also long been the source of artistic inspiration, from the illustrated manuscript of The Silvery Water (1339 AD) [2] to Salvador Dali’s Emerald Tablet in Alchemy of the Philosophers (1976), where a woman’s body above is mirrored by a vibrant green dew drop below. More recently, the tablet’s famous excerpt, “as above, so below” has inspired a titular horror movie set in the Parisian catacombs, the map design in the video game Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as well as paintings by this exhibition’s curator, Amber Koroluk-Stephenson. Between Buildings as Between Stars builds on Koroluk-Stephenson’s existing preoccupation with the phrase, with its various associations of mythical substances, the occult, transformation, secrecy and symbolism, and the close relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm.
Ali Noble’s textile works contain elemental signs and symbols, such as dew drops, which were once considered celestial water by alchemists. In Magic and Commonsense (2024), bold shapes sprout from a hand, recalling the alchemical emblem of the hand of the philosophers. [3] As with the other artists in this exhibition, there’s a sense of mystery and magic, conjuring what art historian James Elkins terms “a feeling of meaning” — the key link between alchemy and contemporary art. [4]
Grace Wood’s Mirror Study (Figure) (2024), evokes “as above, so below” with its mirrored shapes created out of clusters of collaged images in unlikely combinations. In Belly of a Whale (2024), a zebra pelt is punctured with cloudy blue sky, its missing limbs morphing into the outline of a human, the transition transcending dimensions and logic.
Andy Hudson’s sculptural reliefs use raw materials, such as beeswax, wood and bronze, combining and obscuring their true material form. The objects have a familiarity to them, demanding intuition to resolve the nonsensical pairing of elements, the cryptic titles only adding to the sense of mystery.
Like the alchemists, Alicia King tinkers with natural processes, playing with fixity. In Phenomenal Body (Cluster) (2024), iron filings — usually soft to the touch — are transformed into angry spears, their jagged spines reminiscent of naturally occurring crystals.
Georgia Lucy’s installation, Soap Stars 2 (2025), comprises cakes of soap collected during the artist’s hotel cleaning job, an act of ritualistic harvesting. Each used soap is covered in a microcosm of skin flakes and DNA remains from the individual users, which is in turn used as a building block for the larger artwork.
Meg Walch’s collection of paintings also evoke the alchemical relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Celestial bodies are juxtaposed with human hearts, while an image of fluffy household dust sits adjacent to the earthly clouds of Misty Mornings (2024).
Kate Marshall’s fabric installation, Something Delicate, Enchanting and Monstrous (2024), begs for interaction. Textiles are so central to our lives that we do not need to violate the rules of the gallery to imagine the fabric’s softness, and yet the artist invites us to hold and caress the bulbous form, causing the shroud-like muslin to flutter and sag, its flesh-coloured pimply surface at once beautiful and curiously repulsive.
Like the alchemists, the artists in this exhibition strategically use mystery and symbolism, alluding to meaning through fragments of imagery and form. While alchemy itself may be considered a discipline of the past, this exhibition demonstrates how the associated philosophies continue to inspire the artists of the present.
Footnotes:
[1] Isaac Newton, ‘Keynes MS. 28’, The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, 2010, viewed on 10 January 2025
from: http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/newton/ALCH00017.
[2] Held in the Topkapı Palace, a page from Muhammed ibn Umail al-Tamimi’s book, Al-mâ' al-waraqî
(The Silvery Water) can be viewed on Wikimedia:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ibn_Umayl_The_Silvery_Water.jpg
[3] See the original hand of the philosophers in Johan Hollandus’ Die Hand der Philosophen,1746,
digitised by the Munich DigitiZation Center: https://www.digitale-
sammlungen.de/view/bsb00075377?page=31
[4] James Elkins, ‘Four ways of measuring the distance between alchemy and contemporary art’
International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 9, no. 1, 2003, pp. 105-118.
Installation photographs at School House Gallery by Rosie Hastie