we are stardust & Billion year old carbon, 2020
Schoolhouse Studios Gallery
We Are Stardust and Billion Year Old Carbon were exhibited as part of The Biggest Explosion in the Universe, a group exhibition also featuring lona Nelson, The Huxleys, Kate Rhodes, Tai Snaith, Jacqui Stockdale, and Yvette Coppersmith at School House Studios in Collingwood.
Each artist was invited to respond to astrophysicist Paul Lansky’s lecture on gravitational waves. Predicted by Einstein in 1916, the waves were finally detected 100 years later, launching a revolution in modern and astrophysics. Just this one event taught us so much about the Universe: we now know that most of the heavy elements in the Universe such as the gold in our rings are formed in the collisions of two neutron stars, that gravity travels at the speed of light, and that two neutron stars merge somewhere in the Universe every couple of minutes.
Celebrating the happy marriage of science and creative arts, we produced two science fiction book covers, depicting The Hotham Street Ladies riding the gravitational waves and spiralling from a black hole. The titles are taken from Joni Mitchell’s song Woodstock – another spacetime seminal event.
