SIMON AVERILL
EXHIBITION DATES : In person and online from 28/5 - 11/7/2022
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INTRODUCTION :
Anima Mundi are proud to present ‘Entanglement’, a project that Simon Averill has been working on since 2016 and has grown to include over 140 paintings. Each painting has a singular and distinct luminosity achieved through many many glazed layers which are best experienced in the flesh to appreciate the micro and macro quality of his endeavour.
The ambitious project is inspired by the principle of 'Quantum Entanglement’, explained here by physicist Michio Kaku: "There is a cosmic "entanglement" between every atom of our body and atoms that are light-years distant. Since all matter came from a single explosion, the big bang, in some sense the atoms of our body are linked with some atoms on the other side of the universe in some kind of cosmic quantum web. Entangled particles are somewhat like twins still joined by an umbilical cord (their wave function) which can be light-years across. What happens to one member automatically affects the other, and hence knowledge concerning one particle can instantly reveal knowledge about its pair. Entangled pairs act as if they were a single object, although they may be separated by a large distance”.
The paintings are worked on in pairs, as they progress the connection can become more or less explicit, importantly these pairs become seperated. Visitors and collectors are then encouraged to form their own pairings, creating new diptychs in meditation that all things throughout the universe are connected.
“Quantum Physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the Universe.”
3D VIDEO TOUR :
RANDOM DIPTYCH GENERATOR :
ARTIST STATEMENT :
"Action at a distance”, is how Albert Einstein described 'Quantum Entanglement', the extraordinary behaviour of fundamental particles, their particle/wave duality and their uncanny ability to interact, to be entangled, over vast distances. The cutting edge of this research is where imagination and science meet. Scientists and artists are alike in struggling with the fundamental questions about the nature of reality and what exists beyond the known. The advances in understanding that we have made as a species have been possible because of the interaction and entanglement of imagination, thought and experimentation.
Scientists accept there is much that is unknown or misunderstood about 'Quantum Entanglement'. It is this uncertainty that gives me scope and inspiration as an artist to imagine and explore. A physicist might say that form and colour do not, indeed cannot, exist at the fundamental level. As an artist I am not bound by these physical constraints; I have permission to misunderstand; to go beyond the physics; to make space for imagination and art.
These paintings are part of a series of over a hundred works that act like thought experiments taking place obsessively and systematically over a number of recent years. Speculative decisions are applied and carried out; each brushstroke a particle, each layer a wave. As a painter I deal with illusory space on a two dimensional surface. I am testing the possibilities of liminal space where the focus of attention is on or just below the surface. My aim is to heighten the tensions that exist in and between the paintings; the juxtaposition of colour and mark create an optical disturbance that requires the eye to be constantly shifting to locate a point of focus. I work on the paintings in pairs, as they progress the connection can become more or less explicit. New entanglements are made on the surface of each painting and, I hope, in the eye and mind of the viewer. Importantly, I envisage that these pairs will become separated, yet their entangled relationships will remain wherever the individual works are located, accentuating my own interpretation of ‘action at a distance’.
Simon Averill, 2022
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“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
BIOGRAPHY :
Simon Averill's paintings are informed and motivated by his response to light and a compulsion to record the resultant fleeting and transitory phenomena. The experience of being in a certain place will mark itself indelibly on Averill’s conscious – resulting in a methodical and repetitive series of motifs, which describe the intangible effects of light in varying degrees of diffraction, reflection and distortion.
Simon Averill is a British artist born in Brighton, England in 1961. He currently lives and works near Marazion in West Cornwall. Averill studied Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic and graduated with Honours. In 1986 he established a Printmaking Workshop near Penzance, Cornwall, which he ran until 1990. Since 1989 he has lectured at Falmouth University, where he is now a senior lecturer, specialising in painting and drawing. He has been a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists since the late 1980s. Averill has exhibited widely with exhibitions in the UK, Europe and USA including the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show, The Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries, Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, Sherborne House, Plymouth Museum, Plymouth Arts Centre, Truro Museum, Falmouth Art Gallery, Newlyn Art Gallery and the Festival Hall in Chicago, USA.