Cosmology
Sue Michael, Aqua glowing light over Marree, 2018, digital photograph
It wasn’t until I was at home in the suburbs that I discovered this soft aqua glow in the sky above the Far North town of Marree, South Australia. It has stayed in my thoughts since that time, and I find myself sharing this photo at every opportunity as if I was fishing for rationales as to why a coloured light would hover low in the sky. Australia has a remarkable way of adjusting your thinking to the wider concepts of the universe. There are signs of an ancient, if not turbulent world always close to hand, for those keep to look. Splattered layers from meteors, glacial rock deposits, cracks in the earth too large to be filled could be seen as reminders.
A cosmological consideration of a particular place gives weight to a wider view, one where we may find unknowable aspects that can be debated yet left unresolved. The wider considerations as to how earlier people ‘knew of things’ may be useful, and rather than being dismissed could be starting points for the artists’ own personal knowing of that place that interests them. Ancient patterns may still be presenting themselves in our current times such as fossils that ‘lop’ out of ochre cliffs after rain, ancient, ancient fossils that may arise under the hooves of watering cattle, or ancient lichens that can endure in quiet gullies. These finds, if you are lucky enough for them to find you, are potential links to primordial times. They are messengers that contain the same sorts of power that circles our considerations of celestial objects; we do not have to always be gazing heavenwards to be reminded of the wider universe.
Sue Michael, Revegetation efforts and sheep trails, Second Valley, 2015, digital photograph.
When on location, a place can present aspects of the wider universe tat can either contrast or merge with our modest, ephemeral lives. The coastal hillside raises high, for it must take the brunt of the oceans force on its right side. The trails made by animals (perhaps some by people) have been etched into the hill’s surface. Perhaps the sheep enjoy the coastal views as well, their efforts rewarded for the steep ascent. Could this hillside photograph have meaning for potential future prospective Mars settlers? Could your explorations of a place be transferred to any other planet? Are you aware of quintessences, different paces of movement than your day to day life, unexplained mechanisms, scales of place that are beyond our comprehension, clusters of activities (like galaxies in swing), different scales of mass, materials that are hard to comprehend, unfelt movements, collisions, densities, interweaves or hidden scaffoldings? These are considerations that space scientists might consider, but place researchers could advance their environmental awareness in places using the same considerations.
Observation is a skill that can be refined, and the artist may surely require these skills, for our task of representing such cosmological approaches requires careful thought and access to those observed notations.