Looking Beneath The Service
Secret Ladder
image Fragments and Reflections (wire, rock fragments, mirrors)
Indra’s Net is a collaborative exhibition between visual artist Susan Haire and composer Stephen Dydo Open to the Public: 16th – 23rd April at The Cello Factory, 33-34 Cornwall Road, Waterloo, London SE1 8TJ
Indra’s Net takes us on a journey through a series of responses to the ideas of reflection, contemplation and self-knowledge. Comprising of a series of installations it embodies the meeting of science and religion, nature and the self, as well as a breadth of contemplative images and ideas drawn from different philosophies, ancient and modern, spanning East to West in the process.
Included in the show is a series of works from Reflection shown in Peterborough Cathedral in 2012, an ambitious and highly successful solo exhibition that ranged across the entire Cathedral and which later toured to Western Connecticut State University, honouring the visit of his holiness, the Dalai Lama.
This is the first time the installations have been brought back to be displayed in Haire’s native London. The show also includes new and other recent works that extend the metaphor of interconnectedness in different ways.
The exhibition extensively explores the idea of reflection through both light and sound. The sonic accompaniments provided by Stephen Dydo have been written specifically for each of the works. Short melodic fragments are repeated, mirrored, stretched and condensed into multiple reflections of themselves. It is the very reflections that occur in this multi-sensory experience that help unite the audience with the work, and bring forth the underlying concept of the exhibition’s subject matter.
Indra’s Net itself is a reference to an important Buddhist metaphor, and a platform for the artists’ continuing examination of the interconnected and interdependent nature of all things.
To celebrate the display, there will also be a series of music and poetry recitals to accompany the show on various evenings throughout the week. Details of which you can find HERE
Why reflection?
The tall structures that hang through The Cello Factory space convey in awe-inspiring fashion the exhibition’s basis of light and sound, as well as a myriad of multi-faceted reflections and distortions.
Perhaps the centrepiece of the show, The Universe in a Single Atom contains 600 convex mirrored sunglass lenses, each reflecting the viewer in miniature simultaneously, inviting them to twirl or wave playfully.
In Enfolded Light, we see a sculpture that glimmers with an array of shattered DVDs. Here we witness a crucial dichotomy at the heart of Haire and Dydo’s work, where fragments of modern life can be used to access a universal experience of reflection that is rooted in various different schools of ancient thinking from around the world.
By drawing on the western medieval tradition of Speculum, the audience is invited on a journey of self-reflection, using the mirror as an aid to the process of contemplation. Reflection is both the subject and the medium of Indra’s Net.
Other new works…
Indra’s Net presents works from Reflection in a secular context and combines them with new and other recent works which look at interconnectedness in ways that embrace the organic through the ubiquitous materials of water and stone, and in particular through paintings that convey metaphorical aspects of water.
About Susan Haire and Stephen Dydo
Susan Haire has displayed over twenty solo shows, almost all of which have been installations and often incorporating large-scale works. She has collaborated with composers, poets and playwrights for many years, and recitals and performances often play an important role in her exhibitions. Haire has been the President of The London Group since 2007, and is currently overseeing the celebrations for the Group’s centenary year in 2013.
New York composer Stephen Dydo has written a large number of pieces for media ranging from ancient Asian instruments, contemporary chamber and orchestral ensembles, to electronic and video resources which have been performed throughout the US, Europe and Asia. He is also a classical guitarist and qin (Chinese lute) player.
Dydo and Haire have been working together since 2006 making collaborative installations. They have produced seven previous exhibitions including Watermusic at outLINE in Amsterdam in 2010, as well as riverrun which was displayed at both the Hammond Museum, North Salem NY in 2008 and the International Water House in The Hague in 2010. Haire states, ‘it has always been very important for me to be able to include other elements of work that build on, and add new perspective to my art.’ You can find out more about Dydo and Haire’s collaborative projects at www.dydo-haire.com.
