Melanie King, Eric Lesdema, Sheena Rose, Semiconductor, 

Jane & Louise Wilson.

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The Astrologer Who Fell Into A Well 

Contemporary Art And Spirits (CAS)

1 Chome-2-25 Suwa 

Joto Ward 

Osaka 536-0021, 

2018

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An exhibition organised by Tamaki Kawaguchi and curated by Julia Waugh featuring the work of 5 British based artists and 1 Periscope broadcast from Barbados. 

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The title of the exhibition is one of an Aesop Fable, a morality tale for star gaze who ignore hazards on a path. A story written many centuries ago but one that revealed the emerging trend to dismiss the night sky as a place of inquiry.

 

The conceptual paradigm explored further this waning interest in the cosmos, a reverence appearing too romantic as inquiry now must assimilated into the parameters of STEM research.

 

Astrologers viewed the sky as a code to unlock the myopia of our world. Through these astral calendars patterns formed in darkness, revealed a direct influence on our lives, this was a topography as full and relevant as those here on Earth. 

 

Today, the gravitational force of planetary transits is a minor concern to the predilections of the everyday and the “out of this world” is most often located in metaphors of excess.. Historically, Europe with revolutions both industrial and cultural of the 18th and 19th century shifted renaissance and baroque skies into theatrical backdrops predicting turbulence of the 20th.

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It was post world war cinematic world that developed the Sci Fi genre, merging representations of the heavenly with an augmented contemporary. This created a new cosmic sublimity, reframed in movies such as, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the conclusion often transcends the narrative. Are these protagonists always on journeys with spiritual overtones, exaggerated in hyper colour that emphasises some omnipotence of experience?

 

Modernity has assured those heavenly departure gates are permanently closed and for the first time, we collectively have lost every ideal of paradise either terrestrial or unearthly. That "there is nothing more than this", is perhaps, a soporific acknowledgment as anxieties for our futures increase a need for technology. The click through continuum softens and excludes sensorial perception in solitary stimuli of online imaging and streaming sounds. .

 

Yet despite this the sky can still conjures wonder, even when dimmed with the orange glow of a city, plane lights blink at the crescent moon and we know that satellites deliver data faster than portents of comets, but even with these additions, being outside on a cloudless night can inspire some surprising thoughts. 

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We can venture virtually to create the virtuous with mimetic heavens when we wish on synthetic stars. “This astrologer in the well, resembles all of his false art, who while they are in danger, dream, that in the stars, they read the happiest theme.”