Award-winning sculptor—known for his artworks in public spaces—Wolfgang Buttress (1965-), exhibits his work at the Australian National University’s Drill Hall Gallery. The exhibition, “Space,” from 10 May to 23 June 2013, is an assemblage of paintings, maquettes, and drawings.
Inside
the gallery are his drawings and preparations for the larger sculpture called
UNA 013, commissioned by the Australian National University (ANU) College of
Science in 2012. In a separate room is a time lapse video of the creation and
installation of RISE, a public work of art in Belfast, Ireland, which is a
geodesic sphere suspended within a larger 30 metre diameter sphere by discreet,
pre-tensioned galvanised wires. The structure illuminates in darkness.
For
Canberra's ANU, Buttress designed, created, and installed UNA, inspired by
ancient palimpsests—manuscripts that have been written on more than once, with
the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible. Buttress
collaborated with the engineering firm, ARTSCAPE International, for its installation
in the university grounds, near the WK Hancock Building and between the
Linnaeus Building and the Science Teaching Building.
UNA
is a polished 4 metre diameter polished stainless steel sphere with LED
lighting and around 30,000 laser and hand-cut perforations that depict the
9,000 stars in the Southern Hemisphere that are visible to the naked eye. The 9,000 stars
were astronomically studied and perforations on the sphere were cut according to their accurate location and brightness
in the sky. Buttress worked closely with ANU’s astronomy department, and
eminent Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics astronomer Dr. Daniel
Bayliss, who provided the digital star map. A smaller sphere is suspended
inside the larger sphere and is visible when looking into the star’s “holes” of
the outer sphere. The two-tonne installation was completed in March 2013, and
officially opened on May 9, 2013, to coincide with the Drill Hall Gallery
exhibition of the plans and drawings that preceded the installation, as well as
other Buttress works.
The plaque below the sculpture reads: “Mediating on nature, Buttress’s work evokes universal structures. The symmetry body is also present throughout the natural world – evident in cell formation, nautilus shells, diatoms and the stars themselves. By associating us with these phenomena, Buttress seeks to re-establish a more emphatic and harmonious relationship with the universe by means of poetic place-markers which engender a feeling of centeredness. In UNA over 9,000 perforations map all the stars in the Southern Sky which are visible to the naked eye. Emphasising connections between the macro and the micro, UNA can be seen as a portal of reflection that suggests a sense of wonder, elation, and sublimity.”
Viewing the sculpture, it looks like a large polished ball. But look closer. Each of the perforations (large, small, and irregularly shaped) can be peered into. Each hole is a star and each star is a hole. From each hole, the spectator can see the inside sphere. Bouncing off the surfaces, the light resembles the stars in the night sky. It's almost like viewing the cosmos from a space-craft. Not only is it elegant and simple, it is also complex and enthralling, showing the viewer who peers through the stars a most wondrous cosmic fusion of art and science.
Another eye-opener, pointed out to me by a university staff member, is that, if you look very very carefully, you can see the reflection of your own eye as you peer through the perforations. Spooky!
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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