Jacob’s Ladder
Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, 26 July – 20 October, 2018
In the words of Arthur C. Clarke: “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”
Jacob’s Ladder is an exhibition celebrating mankind’s relationship with space and our enduring attempts to fathom the unfathomable. Included are rare historical works alongside contemporary artists whose work considers the imaginative territory between Earth and the heavens. David Austen; Ben Cauchi; Vija Celmins; Susan Derges; Ian Hamilton Finlay; Richard Forster; Marine Hugonnier; Alicja Kwade; Peter Liversidge; Jonny Lyons; Georges Méliès; Garry Fabian Miller; Cornelia Parker; Katie Paterson; Frank Walter and the crews of Apollo 8 & 9. This exhibition will run in partnership with Astronomy Victorious; the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research Collections festival exhibition on the same theme. The display will include objects and rare books across five centuries from Nicolaus Copernicus’ revolutionary work on the movement of the planets On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, of 1543 to Katie Paterson’s recent work Timepieces.