Katie Paterson

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From 25 October 2026 to 11 April 2027, UCCA Dune presents Katie Paterson: Across Deep Time, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in China. Bringing together 21 works created over nearly two decades, including three new commissions by UCCA, the exhibition explores nature, time, and the cosmos through the lens of deep time. Working with materials such as fossils, tree ash, sand, water, light, and scent, Paterson evokes vast geological epochs, distant celestial bodies, and invisible natural cycles. Moving between Earth and the cosmos, from the long histories of forests, deserts, oceans, and the evolution of life to the Moon, stars, and the depths of space, the exhibition invites visitors on a voyage through space and time, shaped by scientific imagination and Romanticism.

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Afterlife at Collective, Edinburgh, ran 19 June to 6 September 2026.

Afterlife brings together nearly 200 amulets in a sculptural installation created in collaboration with Berlin-based architects Zeller & Moye. Inspired by talismanic objects found across cultures and throughout history, the amulets invite reflection on protection, memory and our relationship with the natural world.

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Katie Paterson’s work maps various stages in the geological history of the earth, as well as the universe with its many suns and ancient darkness. Because our present remains the starting point and anchor of these explorations, the focus is not only on places distant in time and space, but above all on the path between here and there.

True North is on show at Galerie Tschudi, Zurich, 31 January – 21 March 2026.

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Katie Paterson Takes Here Study of the Earth to New Heights – The New York Times

Katie Paterson’s work has always been about Earth, and the great vastness beyond.A Scottish multidisciplinary artist, she has worked with scientists across the globe on exhaustively researched projects, including The Future Library, an anthology of 100 previously unpublished books written by some of the 21st century’s most celebrated writers. In 2022, astronomers helped her count the times the sun has risen since the Earth was formed — to the most accurate level scientists can — for a piece titled “—there lay the Days between—.” Years earlier, she had worked with scientists specializing in light at the firm Osram to develop lightbulbs that simulate the lunar glow.

Feature, by Dale Berning Sawa

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Katie Paterson is delighted to have joined The Council at Long Now. For over 25 years, The Long Now Foundation has been producing visionary Projects and Talks that ignite cultural imagination around long-term thinking. The Council is the new advisory body of Long Now, bringing together distinguished public leaders with Long Now emeritus board members and alumni to serve as ambassadors for long-term thinking and responsibility.

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The Frontiers of Infinity is a documentary feature film designed for 360° planetarium domes that invites audiences into a contemplative journey through space and consciousness. It is currently screening at the Planétarium in Montreal and will tour internationally. The Frontiers of Infinity explores humanity’s mysterious quest for knowledge. This immersive film, both instructive and poetic, connects space exploration and neuroscience through interviews with scientists who are pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Guided by the internationally renowned multidisciplinary artist Katie Paterson, we dive deeply into the exploration of consciousness and the Universe, and what connects them.

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Afterlife by Katie Paterson recreates ancient amulets, carved from materials sourced from disappearing landscapes and fragile ecosystems. Stones from islands threatened by rising sea levels, glacial remnants, and materials from fire-ravaged forests are transformed into objects that serve as reflections on loss, connection, and renewal. The project explores themes of deep time, geology, and environmental change, prompting audiences to consider the legacies left for future generations.

Afterlife will be on view at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, summer 2026.

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Counting celebrates 40 years of Galerie Tschudi together with 27 artists: Carl Andre, Kasper Bosmans, Andrea Büttner, Balthasar Burkhard, stanley brouwn, Alan Charlton, Julian Charrière, Hamish Fulton, Bethan Huws, Callum Innes, Steffani Jemison, Kimsooja, Martina Klein, donna Kukama, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Hana Miletić, Katie Paterson, Ulrich Rückriem, Augustas Serapinas, Niele Toroni, Anouk Tschanz, Su-Mei Tse, Not Vital, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Dan Walsh, Petra Wunderlich. The title refers to a simple, almost universal gesture: a child counting steps, stones, or passing strangers. In doing so, the child begins to shape the world into something knowable. Counting becomes a way to create order, to pay attention. The exhibition observes counting not just as a system of numbers, but as something instinctive, imaginative, and layered.

Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz, 26 July – 27 September 2025

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Artica Svalbard welcomes Katie Paterson. During her residency, Paterson is undertaking True North, a project which uses satellite imagery and Arctic light to create a unique photographic series. The work will feature images captured over the polar north using the camera on the nano-satellite “EYE”, operated by Sony’s STAR SPHERE space inspiration project. (Photo Tom Warner).

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20.6.–17.8.2025, Kunsthaus Hamburg

Between Stars and Signals traces the development of navigation as a reflection of our changing worldview – from a spiritual, intuitive connection to the environment towards conceptions relying on data-driven, technological control. Participating artists: Aram Bartholl, Zach Blas, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Charles & Ray Eames, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Timo Nasseri, Norbert Pape & Simon Speiser, Trevor Paglen, Katie Paterson, Marie Pietsch, Agnieszka Polska, Jana Schumacher, Hoda Tawakol

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Katie Paterson has been commissioned for Folkestone Triennial 2025 “How Lies the Land”?
Afterlife will run from Saturday 19 July to Sunday 19 October 2025

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There is another sky, a new exhibition by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, is on view til February 22, 2025, at the James Cohan Gallery’s 52 Walker Street location.

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Dialogues with Turner: Evoking the Sublime, Dialogues with Turner: Evoking the Sublime, Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai, 2024. Alongside Turner’s masterpieces, the exhibition intersperses works by more than ten renowned contemporary artists, including Katie Paterson, Richard Long, Olafur Eliasson, Roni Horn, Peter Doig and Wolfgang Tillmans. Collectively, they provide 21st century interpretations of the 18th century idea of ‘sublime’. This creates the first exhibition in Asia that brings Turner into dialogue with the artists who were influenced by him, providing a compelling curatorial narrative that spans centuries and captivates a wide audience. Co-organised with Tate.

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Sky Gazing, ARoS, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2024-2025

Sky Gazing explores the ways artists have considered and been inspired by the vast spaces and events of the universe and its impacts on art and nature here on Earth. Including works by celebrated contemporary artists Katie Paterson (b.1981), Douglas Gordon (b.1966), Angelica Mesiti (b.1976), Roni Horn (b.1955), Søren Thilo Funder (b.1979) and more, Sky Gazing also presents Danish and European masters, whose works broaden our understanding of man’s eternal fascination with sky gazing from the observational to the abstract. Visitors will experience the immersive cosmos created by renowned Scottish artist, Katie Paterson (b.1981), who invents a galaxy from a dazzling disco ball of photographed eclipses. This is brought together with her prepared piano piece Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) 2007 in which the moon ‘plays’ Beethoven’s composition via satellite bounce.

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Katie Paterson, 〇 II, 2023

A new painting series, created using pigment made from the ashes of over 10,000 tree species.

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Mirgage in The World in My Hand, BLACKBOX, Alexander Tutsek Stiftung, Munich, Germany, 2024

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Turner: Sublime Legacy exhibition at the Grimaldi Forum, 2024

This exhibition, featuring an ensemble of first-rate works in a new scenography of over 2,000 square meters, is an invitation to a journey through Joseph Mallord William Turner’s representations of the world in a sublime mode, from his landscapes to the elementary explorations of light and atmosphere of which he was a pioneer and master. Turner’s decisive influence on painting, and by extension his legacy, will be highlighted in the exhibition through some interpretations of the sublime by leading contemporary artists such as, among others, Richard Long, Olafur Eliasson, Cornelia Parker, Jessica Warboys, John Akomfrah, Katie Paterson, and Mark Rothko.

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The Museum of the World, by Emanuele Coccia

“…From this perspective Future Library is the perfect answer to what we have called the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene has often been described as the movement by which we have invaded all space, made the entire planet our home, expanded to the point where we directly or indirectly occupy so much of the world and so much of the Earth that there is no space left. But the opposite could also be said: the planet has invaded our homes to such an extent that in our living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms live not only partners, children, and perhaps a dog, cat or forsythia, but every other living species. All species, even those least like us, have become pets, houseplants, bacteria, or companion fungi. We are called to share a one-bedroom apartment with them and learn to love them as we love dogs and cats. We cannot move; there is nowhere else to go. Other species cannot leave their homes either. This library is the museum of the dream, and of all species, and the beginning of a city that is home to all of them. It is their and our collective daydream.” Read Future Library 2024 essay by Emanuele Coccia.

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Future Library at Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2024

Norway’s Future Library is a powerful gesture of hope for a world beyond our lifetime. Every year, for 100 years, an author writes a new book to be placed inside the library. Every book remains unread until 2114. Created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson in 2014, the project already contains works by writers including Margaret Atwood and Ocean Vuong. Celebrate Future Library’s 10th anniversary as we announce the writer for 2025.

Future Library at 10 & Writer Announcement. Mon 12 Aug 18:30 – 19:30. Book tickets here.

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Future Library: A Letter to the Future

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Katie Paterson: Requiem, new book

Co-published by Ingleby Gallery and the National Glass Centre following Paterson’s solo show at Ingleby of the same title in 2022, Requiem explores the artist’s enagagement with deep time and the history of the planet. Featuring text by Jan Zalasiewicz (member of the Anthropocene Working Group and author of The Earth After Us), as well as essays by David Farrier and Jay Griffiths. Designed by Jo Deans.

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(Post), The Nordic House, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2024-25

The multimedia art exhibition (Post) presents artwork between 2005 and 2021 from mainly Nordic artists who question and reflect our time and our future. An underlying theme is the anthropocene. Most of the works depict post-industrial structures that raise questions in how to think about a future. Artists: Nana-Francisca Schottländer (DK), Katie Paterson (UK), Marte Aas (NO), Rita Marhaug (NO), Anna Líndal (IS) og Rúrí (IS).

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Future Library handover 2024

Watch the stream from the forest as Valeria Luiselli handed over her manuscript in this mesmerising event this May.

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Valeria Luiselli: the tenth author to contribute to Future Library

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Katie Paterson talks on the main stage at BLOOM Copenhagen, The Art of Deep Time

Bloom is the biggest science and nature festival in Denmark. Bloom brings science and ideas out of the laboratories and auditoriums and helps us reflect on the world, the universe, and ourselves. Under the swaying treetops of the historical park Søndermarken, Bloom presents some of today’s most recognized scientists, researchers, philosophers, and artists. Explore talks, walks, music and art while casting a curious gaze at the mysteries and wonders of nature.

Bloom took place in Søndermarken in Copenhagen on 24–26 May 2024.

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Wallpaper Magazine: New glass sculpture creates a verdant wonderland at Apple’s Cupertino HQ

‘Mirage’ at Apple Park is the work of Zeller & Moye and artist Katie Paterson, a shimmering array of glass columns that snakes through the grounds of the company’s monumental HQ. Read more.

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The KIKK’s new exhibition at Le Pavillon will focus on astronomy and space exploration. With its deep skies that hypnotise and captivate, space holds an unrivalled fascination for the human race. At a time when the Anthropocene crisis is shaking our environmental, technological and democratic balances, the ‘Land of Night’ is in turn the last frontier to be colonised, a resource to be exploited, a tourist destination, an observatory for remote surveillance, a dumping ground for orbiting debris, and forever the infinite constellation of our original questions and (meta)physical dreams. From the atomic fragment to the universal whole, the Stellar Scape exhibition brings together some twenty international artists, researchers and engineers to explore the imaginary world of astronomy and the revival of space adventures.

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Future Library handover 2024

Watch the recording of author Valeria Luiselli talking at Deichman Bjorvika as part of the Future Library events this May.

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The Future Library: An untold anthology growing in Oslo, Vogue Scandinavia, by Billie Breskin, 2024

The 100-year durational artwork celebrates a decade this year. This weekend, in Oslo’s Nordmarka wilderness, something of a pilgrimage will take place. Amongst the lush woodlands that surround the Norwegian capital, a special glade of one thousand trees, the Future Library Forest, will reach the 10th year of its growth. A decade ago, the trees of this forest were planted and, 90 years from now, they will be cut down. For each year of this century span, an author writes a manuscript. Kept safe in a chamber within Deichman Bjørvika, Oslo’s main library, nobody will read the texts until 2114, when they will be printed on paper made from the trees of the Future Library Forest. Read more.

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STARSPHERE

Katie Paterson has become part of an exciting, ambitious new project, STARSPHERE, alongside artists and creators Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vik Muniz, Yukimasa Ida, and Mago Nagazaka. STARSPHERE is described as ‘a project to bring space closer to everyone and join together to acquire ”Space perspectives”. The “space perspectives” that are so integral to the STARSPHERE project mean not just the physical perspectives of viewing things from space, but also the intellectual and emotional perspectives of perceiving and contemplating thigs through space. Individuals and various communities will be connected to space through a satellite that anyone can freely operate and use to take pictures. Enjoying and updating the things, ideas , and culture that surround us from “space perspectives” will enrich both our daily lives and the future of the Earth. This is a group project where the class consists of all approximately 8 billion people on Earth.

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The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK, 2024

The Shape of Things questions the idea that still life is a lesser genre, showing how important it is to artists and society. Featuring a ‘Who’s Who’ of Modern and Contemporary British artists, the exhibition digs into still life’s rich symbolism and how it’s pushed boundaries and new ideas. The exhibition shifts from 17th-century ‘vanitas’ paintings to post-impressionism to abstraction and from pop to conceptual art. It invites viewers to think about life’s challenges, such as love and grief, identity and the subconscious, life and death and plenty and waste. Today, these challenges also include biodiversity loss, the legacy of colonialism, and climate change. On display are a selection of works by modern and contemporary artists in Britain including Hurvin Anderson, Vanessa Bell, Edward Burra, Patrick Caulfield, Lucian Freud, Gluck, Duncan Grant, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Jann Haworth, David Hockney, Lee Miller, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, William Nicholson, Katie Paterson, Eric Ravilious, Anwar Jalal Shemza, William Scott, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, Edmund de Waal, Rachel Whiteread and Clare Woods. The exhibition looks at how these artists have used traditional art history to express the complexities of the human condition.

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LEDA and the SWAN, a myth of creation and destruction, Victoria Miro, London, 2023-24

Curated by Minna Moore Ede and presented by Vortic Curated and Victoria Miro, an exhibition of primarily new work by sixteen artists across a variety of media – drawing, painting, sculpture, film and dance. Their responses to the myth of Leda and the Swan are diverse; each has found their own meaning in the story, revealing much about our contemporary preoccupations, be they personal or universal. Artists: Kim Brandstrup, Saskia Colwell, Miranda Forrester, Robin Friend, Tom Hunter, Annie Morris, Audrey Niffenegger, Ana Maria Pacheco, Katie Paterson, Conrad Shawcross and Marina Warner, Kiki Smith,Barbara Walker, Mark Wallinger, Alison Watt, Flora Yukhnovich.

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Arcadia and Elsewhere, James Cohan Gallery, New York, 2024

Arcadia and Elsewhere anchors landscape painting in the myriad portrayals of Arcadian landscapes, which portray nature as an idealized foil to the torrents of human civilization, stretching back into antiquity. The exhibition highlights the enduring prevalence of the landscape in contemporary painting, building connections between both established and emerging artists furtively engaged in the depiction of our natural surroundings as enduring sites of significance, while expanding and complicating the loaded ways in which landscape manifests as a form unto itself.

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Into the Woods. Perspectives on Forest Ecosystems, Klima Biennale Wien, Kunsthaus Wien, Austria, 2024

In association with Klima Biennale Wien, KUNST HAUS WIEN presents a comprehensive group exhibition on one of the world’s most vital ecosystems: the forest. Sixteen contemporary artistic positions reflect on the forest as a habitat, its ecological processes, as well as the threats it faces. More than ever, the world’s forests have become monuments to the imbalances found on our planet. Forests filter water and air, and supply resources and food. As habitats for the majority of terrestrial animals, forests are beneficial to human health, and, as vital carbon stores, help stabilize the planet’s climate. Logging and the profit-oriented exploitation of woodlands are accelerating the ecological crisis while climate change fuels deforestation. Artists: Rodrigo Arteaga, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, Eline Benjaminsen & Elias Kimaiyo, Alma Heikkilä, Monica Ursina Jäger, Markus Jeschaunig, Isa Klee, Susanne Kriemann, Jeewi Lee, Antje Majewski, Richard Mosse, Katie Paterson, Oliver Ressler, Abel Rodríguez, Diana Scherer, Rasa Šmite & Raitis Šmits

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Future Library, Nobel Museum Talk, Stockholm, 2024

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Carboniferous Love at Hessel Museum of Art, New York, 2024

Featuring the work of six different artists, including Katie Paterson, Carboniferous Love, named for the rich coal stores that were produced over three-hundred million years ago when Earth was uncovered with swamp forests, will present works that “recailbrate perceptions of time and space”, and explore the rich material history of Earth.

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Talk: How to Think Like Hiroshi Sugimoto, December 2023

Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff and a panel of experts discuss the inventive and inquisitive mind of Hiroshi Sugimoto. Joining him are artist Katie Paterson, curator Lena Fritsch and critic Ravi Ghosh. Together they explore the different and sometimes contrasting sides of Sugimoto’s work including his abiding commitment to the craft of film photography and fascination with the camera’s ability to manipulate our perception of time.

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Mars: the Red Mirror, ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2023-24

The Red Mirror will launch visitors on an out-of-this-world expedition through 12,000 years of culture, art, history, and science about Mars from ancient times to the present day. It is the most comprehensive historical and cultural exhibition on the Red Planet to land in Singapore, featuring over 300 objects, including significant historical artefacts, rare scientific manuscripts, films, contemporary works of art, and even an authentic Martian meteorite. Having been a subject of fascination over millennia, Mars has captured humankind’s imagination like no other planet. Space agencies from around the world are actively exploring Mars, with three active rover missions currently on the planet, and several manned space missions on the horizon. Mars: The Red Mirror reflects the enduring connection humanity has to the Red Planet by bringing together narratives from pioneering scientists, modern day experts, filmmakers, writers, and contemporary artists who have been exploring Mars through time and across diverse cultures.

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TIME: From Dürer to Bonvicini, Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland, 2023-24

Katie’s work Timepieces (Solar System), 2014, is on show as part of a group exhibition Time, at Kunsthaus Zürich. The exhibition is a journey through the history of time which brings together paintings, videos, films, installations, performances and examples of the watchmaker’s art. The works attest to the ephemeral nature of life; they tell of the changing seasons, the possibilities to reflect and global financial markets that are now synchronized down to the last picosecond. A multilayered carpet that sheds light on historical, palaeontological and physical views of time is laid out over more than 1,200 metres of exhibition space, dividing the presentation into six chapters which consider ‘deep time’, political dimensions and biological aspects of time, and more. Participatory formats invite visitors to share their views on innovative models of the future. The opportunity is as appealing as it is urgent, given the unending debate within society about how we can still safeguard the survival of our planet and those who live on it – and how much time we have left to do so.

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The Recent, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 2024

Katie Paterson, alongside Eglė Budvytytė, Helen Cammock, Dorothy Cross, Regina de Miguel, Mikala Dwyer, Nicholas Mangan, Angelica Mesiti, Otobong Nkanga, Micol Roubini and Simon Starling, will show in a new exhibition, The Recent, at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh. The Recent takes us into a conceptual world of geological, evolutionary, human and environmental time, exploring what art can do to stretch the human imagination, and situate our actions and impact in a deeper, future-oriented timeframe. The geological ruminations that underpin the exhibition are deeply rooted in Edinburgh – a city punctuated by a dormant volanco – and the place that eighteenth century geologists James Hutton, and late Charles Lyell, developed the theory of deep time that is reflected in many of the artists’ works. To Burn, Forest, Fire by Paterson, uses scent to explore the first-ever forest on Earth, and the last forest in the age of the climate crisis. The artwork employs the senses to cultivate an intimate, intuitive experience that aims to transport participants through time as a reminder of the increasing levels of extinction caused by humanity. Also on show is Evergreen, an artwork which depicts every extinct flowering plant, brought together in an embroidery, reflective of the Arts and Crafts movement, whose core characteristics were the importance of nature as inspiration, and the value of simplicity, utility and beauty. Evergreen represents a reverence for nature, and mourning for all that is, or soon to be, lost.

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Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, USA, 2023

All art forms, even music and literature, are partially dependent on the material world. The visual arts, however, are more linked with materialism, as the field is primarily defined by objects, which are made of physical matter. Even digital media is contingent on matter, whether it is the silicon that makes a microprocessor, or the lithium that comprises the battery in a cell phone. For thousands of years humans have speculated on what the world is made of. “Prima materia” was a concept first put forth by Aristotle to describe the primitive, formless base for all matter. Later, Plato in his treatise Timaeus, wrote “The body of the world is composed of four elementary constituents, earth, air, fire, and water, the whole available amount of which is used up in its composition.” The alchemists of both medieval Europe and those of the Islamic Middle East and North Africa were the first who began to doubt the primacy of the ancient four elements and their speculation led to the transition from alchemy to chemistry that began in the Renaissance. The names given to the eras in human history–stone, bronze, iron, and now silicon, are indicative of how our understanding of matter has transformed culture.

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Air, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, 2023

Journey through the invisible, ethereal and vital element of air. Presented across the entire ground floor of GOMA, the exhibition is a journey through this invisible, ethereal and vital element, reflecting on awareness of our shared atmosphere as life-giving, potentially dangerous and rapidly warming. Artists: Jananne Al-Ani / Carlos Amorales / Oliver Beer / Dora Budor / Tacita Dean / Max Dupain / Peter Fischli and David Weiss / d Harding with Hayley Matthew / Mona Hatoum / Nancy Holt / Jonathan Jones with Uncle Stan Grant Snr / Ali Kazim / Anthony McCall / Lee Mingwei / Rachel Mounsey / Ron Mueck / Rei Naito / Albert Namatjira / Jamie North / Charles Page / Katie Paterson / Rosslynd Piggott / Patrick Pound / Lloyd Rees / Tomás Saraceno / Yhonnie Scarce / Wolfgang Sievers / Thu Van Tran / Jemima Wyman

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The Moment, Durham Cathedral

The Moment is an installation by Katie Paterson that forms a part of the National Glass Centre’s major project the Glass Exchange. The work consists of a series of hourglasses that flow for fifteen minutes, allowing the audience to reflect on the vastness of time and one’s role within it. The Moment was displayed at Durham Cathedral, Sunderland Minster and the National Glass Centre.

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Mirage

Katie Paterson and Zeller & Moye have been commissioned by Apple to create a public permanent artwork at the Apple Campus in Cupertino, USA. This public sculpture for the olive grove adjacent to the Visitor Center at Apple Park, has been created from cylinders of pure cast glass, made of sand collected from deserts across the Earth. Sand from subtropical deserts, coastal, rain-shadow, interior, mountainous, volcanic and fossilized deserts were melted into glass. Over four-hundred cast glass columns combine every desert on Earth into a wave-like form, mimicking a desert dune. Visitors can interact with the artwork, walking alongside and through it, where the glass subtly melts into the landscape, like a desert mirage. The artwork is open to the public.

www.mirage.place

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Apollo: ‘An elegy to a disappearing planet’, review of Requiem at Ingleby Gallery

Cradled in my palm is a round, glass vial containing about a tablespoon of crushed bryozoans – tiny, primitive ocean-dwellers, whose species has lived on earth for about half a billion years. Since the start of the Devonian Period, the specimens I am holding have remained in much the same shape – forged together in a colony, not unlike a coral reef, on a stratum of rock in southwestern Ukraine – gradually becoming fossils. Until a relative blink-of-the-eye ago, that is, when they were collected, crushed into a fine dust, poured into this vial, and at last picked up by me. I attempt, vainly, to muster a couple of words equal to the occasion of the strange ceremony that is about to occur; then I walk over to the middle of the room and tip the bryozoa dust into a large glass urn, where it lands with a bathetic little puff, to mingle with the dust of other aeons.

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Katie Paterson, BBC Futures, The Art Of Thinking In Deep Time

In the second instalment of this three-part series about “deep time”, Journalist and author of The Long View, Richard Fisher, explores the mind-expanding work of Katie Paterson. Fisher considers the briefness of our lives in comparison to the grand timescales of the Earth, investigating Paterson’s Future Library in Oslo, whose books won’t be read until 2114, as well a room in Ingleby where pre-solar dust and Anthropocene detritus merge in a material record which spans all of time.

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The Future Library silent room is now open!

Last year’s handover ceremony was a very special event, a milestone for a visionary project: not only the annual handover took place, but this year three acclaimed authors were part of the ceremony, which included the opening of the manuscripts’ resting place, the silent room in the new public library Deichman Bjørvika. The silent room will be home to all of the manuscripts contributed to the project until their eventual publication in the year 2114. The room is designed by artist Katie Paterson and architects Atelier Oslo and Lund Hagem.

www.futurelibrary.no

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Sustainability Workshop, Norman Foster Foundation | October 10–14, 2022

While there is an imperative to ensure human survival in the face of climate change, learning from nature’s intricate systems is crucial to ensuring a good quality life for all living things. What if the boundary between humans and ecosystems didn’t exist? What if we could transform our waste into nutrients for other organisms? The Norman Foster Foundation presents a new session of its Sustainability Workshop. The Academic Body brings together a wide range of practitioners from different fields related to biointegrated and ecologic design. The Academic Body includes: Stefano Boeri, Founder and Director of Stefano Boeri Archiecti; Cristina Iglesias, Spanish Artist and Sculptor; Mitchell Joachim, Co-founder of Terreform ONE and Associate Professor of Practice at New York University; Mohsen Mostafavi, Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design and Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University; Brenda Parker, Associate Professor of Sustainable Bioprocess Design at the Department of Biochemical Engineering of University College London; Claudia Pasquero, Co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London, Landscape Architecture Professor at Innsbruck University and Associated Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture; Katie Paterson, Scottish Artist; Marco Poletto, Co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London; and architect, theorist and urban planner, Moshe Safdie.

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Evergreen, Katie Paterson, Galleri F15, Moss, Norway, 28 May – 5 October 2022

Katie Paterson’s first solo show in Norway at Galleri F15 comprised several new artworks including —there lay the Days between— and Evergreen.

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Time’s Relentless Melt, Princeton University Art Museum, 2022

Katie Paterson exhibited work at Princeton University Art Museum’s group exhibition entitled Time’s Relentless Melt. This exhibition presents photographic time-based works that center around the complex nature of time, and the tension between transience and permanence, recording and remembering. Paterson’s work will exhibit alongside artists including Andy Goldsworthy and Dawoud Bey.

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Requiem, Katie Paterson at Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, UK, 9th April – 11th June, 2022.

An exhibition by Katie Paterson at Ingleby Gallery brought together dust gathered from material dating from pre-solar times to those of the present.

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Katie Paterson on TED: Why connecting to deep time matters to us all

Short-sightedness may be the greatest threat to humanity, says conceptual artist Katie Paterson, whose work engages with deep time – an idea that describes the history of the Earth over a time span of millions of years. In this lively talk, she takes us through her art – a telephone line connected to a melting glacier, maps of dying stars – and presents her latest project: the Future Library, a forested room holding unread manuscripts from famous authors, not to be published or read until the year 2114.

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Vertigo, Julian Charrière and Katie Paterson
Galleri Tschudi, Zuoz, Switzerland, 18 December 2021–26 March 2022

“To have the work of Katie Paterson and Julian Charrière in the same space is a festival for the senses and imagination. Their work expands our minds and brings our thoughts into the most extreme dimensions. They work on the scale of geology, eternity, using elements from ancient fossils to radioactive measurements to astronomical observations.” Andri Snær Magnason

www.galerie-tschudi.ch

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Katie Paterson in Kinfolk, Issue 40

Katie Paterson’s garage contains moon dust. It’s stored alongside offcuts from a mammoth’s thighbone and a collection of wood samples from 10, 000 different trees, each acquired in the name of art. In her work, Paterson poses searching existential questions in the form of poetic acts, whether that be setting up a live phone line to a melting glacier, sending a meteorite back into space or bouncing a recording of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata off the surface of the moon…

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Julian Charrière And Katie Paterson: Meteors And Metabolisms, by Nicolas Bourriaud
“Katie Paterson and Julian Charrière are currently exhibiting in parallel. In both of their oeuvres, human existence itself is not shown, but is instead resituated in its cosmic or geological position, represented in the general context of the biomass. And both, in their respective works, implement temporalities of great amplitude. Their works could thus belong to a neo-metaphysical movement in contemporary art, which will undoubtedly remain associated with the beginning of the twenty-first century in future accounts of the history of art. Because the essential question for the artists of our time is the meaning of their work in a world in danger.”

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I deas, Katie Paterson, Edinburgh University Kings Building Campus

What time is it on Venus? What will be read by unborn people? Is it possible to plant a forest using saplings from the oldest tree on earth? Can we make ink to be read only under moonlight? Katie Paterson’s Ideas pose questions about deep time, and the limit of what is real and what is imagined. In the largest site responsive presentation of the work to date, one hundred existing and newly created Ideas have been brought together and installed across selected locations at the University of Edinburgh’s King’s Buildings campus. The Ideas are located across an array of buildings (both outside and in), as well as in gardens, grounds and hidden and unexpected places, at varying levels, high and low. Each short text concerns the landscape, the universe, or an expanded sense of earthly and geological time. Ideas is a permanent commissioned by the University of Edinburgh’s College of Science and Engineering, and is open to visit daily.

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The Earth Has Many Keys: Andri Snær Magnason in conversation with Katie Paterson

In this podcast, Katie Paterson and writer Andri Snær Magnason talk about the world we live in, the catastrophic consequences of the human race’s behaviour, and how art can be a power of change.

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To Burn, Forest, Fire, new website

To Burn, Forest, Fire consists of the scent of the first-ever forest on earth and the scent of the last forest of the age of climate crisis, made into incense. It was burned across a variety of sites around the city of Helsinki in 2021, as IHME’s 2021 commission. Visit our new website to explore films, texts, and more.

www.to-burn-forest-fire.com

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The Art (and Pop Culture) of Getting Long Time

As we move towards 2022 so many of us are burnt out and overwhelmed: by the pandemic; by the uncertainty of the future; and by huge challenges like climate change, systemic racism, and inequality. The Long Time Academy is a new podcast that steps into this space with one clear message: changing the way we choose to engage with time can be life-changing, both when it comes to the problems we’re facing day to day, and to the huge threats we’re facing as a species. Brian Eno, Katie Paterson, Bridgit Antoinette Evans, Anab Jain, Jeremy Lent and Sherri Mitchell are part of a 40 strong faculty who have come together to teach one of the most important classes of 2021. Hosted by co-founder of The Long Time Project, Ella Saltmarshe, The Long Time Academy hopes to give listeners a sense of spaciousness, awe and passion to become good ancestors.

www.thelongtimeacademy.com

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Katie Paterson at Kunsthaus Zurich

Earth Beats, October 4, 2021 – February 6, 2022, Zurich, Switzerland

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To Burn, Forest, Fire | Art, Science, Ecology: Katie Paterson, Jan Zalasiewicz, J Sakari Salonen

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To Burn, Forest, Fire | Katie Paterson and David Haskell in conversation

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Endling, a new artwork by Katie Paterson is on show at Galleri Tschudi til March 2022.

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On the aromas of the first and last forests, by David Haskell

“Humans have used incense for thousands of years, mostly as a bridge to what dwells beyond the everyday, through prayer, oblation, and ritual. To Burn, Forest, Fire places that experience into the context of deep time and the living Earth community.”

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Contemporary artists pay homage to land art legend Nancy Holt, Wallpaper Magazine, 2022

At the 12th-century Lismore Castle, Ireland, a group show ‘Light and Language’ explores the enduring legacy of American conceptual and land art pioneer Nancy Holt. Scottish artist Katie Paterson has created a new work responding to the architecture of Lismore Castle. Her ‘Ideas’ wall pieces are subtle: short texts that ‘when read come alive through the visitor’s imaginations’. Discrete in scale, they are cut from silver and reflect brightly when the light hits them. The artist reflects on her affinity with Holt’s artistic sensibilities: ‘her work showed me how expansive art can be; through its material form (she worked across mediums) it’s scale, its conceptual language and emotional and perceptual impact. Nancy Holt worked with the cyclical time of the universe, the motions of the earth and the sun. She aimed to ‘connect people with the planet earth’, to bring ‘the sky down to earth’ which chimes very much with my approach.’

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Artist talk

Katie Paterson answers questions on Future Library 2014-211, National Galleries of Scotland

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Katie Paterson, To Burn, Forest, Fire, IHME commission 2021

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Artist Talk: Katie Paterson, Princeton University Art Museum

Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, Katie Paterson creates projects that consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Join the artist as she creates a unique sonic journey. We will move from calling a glacier in Iceland to listening to the split-second tone of a star dying in the distant universe to hearing the full recital of a musical score she transmitted to the moon. Paterson will also explore artworks that involve silence, and those that exist entirely in the imagination.

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Katie Paterson’s talk at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Visiting Artists Program

Katie Paterson is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually driven work with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, Paterson’s projects consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her artworks make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic, and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment.

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Shock Waves, Artist Katie Paterson, BBC Radio 4

Katie Paterson is one of the leading artists of her generation. Much of her work explores our place on earth in relation to geological or even cosmic time. As the pandemic brought many aspects of our lives to a halt, and caused various projects and exhibitions to be cancelled or delayed, she’s been exploring how this break in life’s continuum is affecting artistic creativity.

Comparing notes with other artists – including Edmund de Waal, who’s had his most creative year ever, and Peter Liversidge, who saw a gallery that he’d been preparing an exhibition for close – she reflects on the artistic shock waves of the pandemic and its unexpected consequences.

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Art for Lunch: A Conversation with Katie Paterson

Katie Paterson joins James Cohan in conversation to discuss Paterson’s experience making art during quarantine and her work’s exploration of deep time, the cosmos, and the place of humans in relation to these phenomena.

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All That Was Solid Melts, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2021

Isolation is something we have recently experienced. Like many generations before us we have felt the anxieties of being in the midst of a plague. We have sought ways to counter fear, apprehension, loneliness, separations and have been plunged into private diversions and distractions to wait out time. We have come to realise that all that was solid, everything we counted on, and took for granted – work, leisure, travel, society, even family – might melt away or fracture; that things are mutable, apt to change and that we must adapt if we are to thrive in these new circumstances. All That Was Solid Melts takes us on a journey from isolation through the multiple anxieties of life and catastrophe, something New Zealanders are particularly familiar with, and along the way offers moments of historical sympathy, solace, and discovery. When, finally, we step beyond the itinerary we will have travelled through metaphors and emotions, realising that we too are simply passing through time, which is but a small moment in a longer plan; that we are but a spec in the cosmos; that things come before and will come after our moment; that we will be deconstructed to reconstruct ourselves. Explore major works by some of the world’s leading contemporary names such as Pipilotti Rist, Tacita Dean, Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, Katie Paterson and many more.

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BBC Ideas | Do we need to re-think our ideas of time?

As a society, we’re so focused on the short term. But is this wrecking the environment? Do we need to think more long term? If so, how?

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The Long Time Sessions – Art & The Distant Edges Of Time, The Long Time Project

Katie Paterson is one of the leading artists of her generation. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, her work considers our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. She has created projects like All the Dead Stars that maps 27,000 dead stars and Future Library, a newly planted forest of 1,000 trees near Oslo will be tended for 100 years. Each year, an author writes a book and gives it to the library to be buried. The first was Margaret Atwood; the latest is South Korean Han Kang. In 2114, the trees will be harvested to print and reveal Paterson’s anthology of 100 books. In this session Katie explores her art and the distant edges of time.

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Message to the Moon: Katie Paterson’s Life in Astronomy, Frieze, profile, Issue 204

Contemplating deep space and ‘cosmic archaeology’, the artist reflects on her fascination with the universe beyond planet Earth.

“I was sitting in a cupboard in Reykjavik when I learned that it was possible to send messages to the moon. I was scrolling through pages of lunar information and came across the technology ‘Earth-Moon-Earth’, which allows messages to be sent to the moon and back, fragmented by space and distance. Later, walking under a full moon, I imagined what messages I might transmit there myself….” Katie Paterson

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Katie Paterson at Hayward Gallery, Winter Light

Katie Paterson’s artworks often reveal the beauty and poetry in the natural phenomena of our planet and beyond. For Totality she has created a large mirrorball using over 10,000 images of solar eclipses, each image printed as a single mirrored fragment. The images depict the many states of eclipse – from partial to total – while their corresponding reflections dance across the walls of the surrounding space.

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Tsitsi Dangarembga’s next work won’t be read by anyone until 2114, The Guardian

The Zimbabwean writer joins authors including Margaret Atwood and Ocean Vuong who have agreed to lock away new writing in the Future Library.

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Only Artists – Katie Paterson meets David Mitchell

In this BBC radio documentary, the artist Katie Paterson meets the novelist David Mitchell. Katie Paterson is an award-winning artist whose conceptual works have included the sounds of melting glaciers and a map of 27,000 dead stars. She also sent a meteorite back into space. The best-selling author David Mitchell has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize twice – for number9dream and Cloud Atlas.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Interview, Paterson, Artist of deep time, Nature Magazine

Philip Ball talks to Katie Paterson, whose artworks take on climate change, Moon dust and the death of stars.

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Art review: NOW, The Scotsman

The focus of this final NOW moment is Glasgow-born Katie Paterson, with the first major presentation of her work in Scotland. Like the celestial bodies she concerns herself with, Paterson’s work evolves slowly, and this show brings together projects from the last decade. Embracing ideas of cosmic scale and significance, she has developed quietly ingenious ways of fitting them inside our heads. Applying both rigorous research and rigorous conceptualism, she takes material which often appears closed and distant and cracks it open, finding not existential angst but a kind of wonder and poetry.

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Katie Paterson, Sculpture Magazine

Scottish artist Katie Paterson has described time as the “material” with which she creates her work. In this modest but significant survey her playful, rigorously researched works tick with the passing of millennia as stars die, solar eclipses pass, and planets spin. Shown across six rooms, the show brings together 11 works from 2007 to the present and marks—with separate contributions from Darren Almond, Shona Macnaughton, and Lucy Raven—the final exhibition in the gallery’s contemporary art series “NOW.”

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How to future-proof a work of art that will not be completed for 100 years, The Art Newspaper

As Katie Paterson’s sand castle project goes on tour, we look at how her Future Library is being made to outlive the artist.

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What Do Artists Do All Day: Katie Paterson, BBC 4

Katie Paterson and Zeller&Moye’s public artwork, Hollow, is made out of 10,000 samples of different tree species and unveiled in Bristol in early May. This film follows Katie over a ten-month period as she assembles the wood collection and creates the artwork. Sourced from all around the world, her samples include the oldest tree in the world, a tree that survived a nuclear blast and many trees that are now extinct. Katie’s quest to collect tree samples takes her to an arboretum in Scotland and the national wood collection at Kew, to create an artwork designed to inspire wonder at the evolution of trees through time and the fragility of life on our planet.

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Behind the Scenes, Katie Paterson – The Matter of Time, BBC Radio 4

Scottish artist Katie Paterson offers us back the universe, with the help of experts in science and technology. On this journey, we’ll hear more from Paterson about her work as an artist, and report on her nationwide project First There is a Mountain, which takes place on beaches around Britain. We also hear about the room at her grandmother’s house where, as a child, she’d lock herself in to have visions. Katie Paterson was born in Glasgow in 1981, studied at Edinburgh College of Art then spent a year living in Iceland before embarking on a master’s at the Slade. She returned to Iceland to work as a waitress when the night sky became her obsession. She has pursued projects which engage a variety of scientific specialisms, especially astronomy and astrophysics. She’s been an artist-in-residence at University College London and is in regular contact with academic departments, observatories and amateur astronomers around the world.

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‘I’ve breathed in some crazy things from outer space’ – Katie Paterson’s cosmic art, The Guardian

The artist who once sent a meteorite back into orbit is now looking for the heavenly in Turner’s paintings, in a show that explodes with moonlight and gamma ray confetti.

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Katie Paterson feature in Harper’s Bazar, Quantum Leap

Katie Paterson’s visionary exploration of time, space and the beauty of the cosmos.

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Katie Paterson nominated by Margaret Atwood as ’12 Women Who Are Shaping Our Future’

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James Cohan: Twenty Years

James Cohan is pleased to present James Cohan: Twenty Years, a special group exhibition celebrating the gallery’s twentieth anniversary.

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The art project that will take 100 years to grow

Mary Anne Hobbs meets Katie Paterson of Future Library, a project which is currently busy growing in a forest in Norway…Paterson is gathering 100 stories from celebrated authors about ‘imagination’ and ‘time’, every year for a century. The books will remained unpublished until the year 2114, when they will be printed on paper from the forest’s trees, ready for the next generation.

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Artist Katie Paterson raises money for domestic abuse victims at risk during coronavirus outbreak

For a charitable donation, the Scottish visual artist is selling 1,000 digital copies of one of her books based on the universe.

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Katie Paterson At Home, Spring 2020, by Ingleby Gallery (IG TV)

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BBC Radio 4, Wireless Nights

Jarvis Cocker navigates the ether as he continues his nocturnal exploration of the human condition. On a night voyage across a sea of shortwave he meets those who broadcast, monitor and harvest electronic radio transmissions after dark. Artist Katie Paterson and ‘Moonbouncer’ Peter Blair send Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back, to find sections of it swallowed up by craters.

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Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?, BBC 4

Dr James Fox embarks on an open-minded guide for the perplexed and asks ‘What is conceptual art?’, ‘How should we approach it?’ and crucially, ‘Why should we care?’. Roaming between the past, present and future he examines a mind-bending selection of the most influential conceptual ideas and artworks, alongside meeting the leading movers and shakers of today. And who knows? In the end, Dr Fox might find himself unexpectedly seduced by this trickiest of art forms.

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A Place That Exists Only In Moonlight: Katie Paterson & JMW Turner | Turner Contemporary

Watch artist Katie Paterson talk about art and science, space and time. See her awe-inspiring artworks inspired by astronomy and cosmology, the imagination, the natural world and the entire universe. In this film, Paterson also discusses her fascination with JMW Turner’s paintings that relate to the natural world, including moonscapes, glaciers, and mountains, and well as both artists’ shared connection with Margate. Paterson notes the astonishing colours of the coastal environment in Thanet, the sunsets and the wild seas.

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First There is a Mountain, Anthology

“Lift a handful of sand, let it slip between your fingers and contemplate the eons that have passed, the civilisations that have risen and crumbled away before time milled it to this fineness. It drifts and obscures, burying crops, grazing land, cities and entire civilisations; yet sometimes it shifts to reveal what has been lost.” James Attlee

“Someone once tried to explain the concept of infinity to me by saying that if an eagle flew past a mountain every million years and touched it lightly with its wingtip, by the time the mountain had crumbled to nothing, that might equate to one second of forever.” Helen Pheby

“An expanse of sand is the most eternal of landscapes and the most changeable. As we build our mountains, we remember that our labours are ephemeral, our lives are short and everything must change.” Patrick Barkham

“Sand is mesmerising: both ordinary and enchanted, intimate and infinite, a marker of time – the three-minute egg: the five-minute essay – as well as of infinities of scale…” Richard Hamblyn

“How small, how fragile can a work of art be before it drifts away on the wind or floats out to sea? And how large, or long-drawn-out, before we are unable to apprehend it all at once?” Brian Dillon

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Katie Paterson has created the 30th and final work for Ingleby Gallery’s public art project Billboard for Edinburgh.

Paterson’s billboard image is one of her Ideas sentences. These are short haiku-like statements reveal some of Paterson’s most exciting and seemingly impossible ideas. Paterson has gone on to realise a number of these poetic phrases as physical artworks. What gradually becomes clear with Paterson’s work is that the distance between the realised and the unrealisable is not to be relied upon.

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Katie Paterson, Monograph

This first comprehensive overview covering the work of Katie Paterson is hardback, 256 pages, 289 colour illustrations with a foreword by Nicolas Bourriaud and essays by Mary Jane Jacob, Lisa Le Feuvre and Lars Bang Larsen. The artworks in this book have been ordered as a ‘time telescope’, by duration – seconds, minutes, hours, years and light years.

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