“I was intrigued by what artist Mat Brown was talking about. How science is the 21st century religion.” Scott McGovern, curator of This View of Life: Evolutionary Art for the Year of Darwin believes in the link between science and art.

McGovern, along with five advisors from the University of Guelph organized an exhibit in the Atrium of the new science complex which celebrates the year of Darwin. This comes on the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, Origin of Species, and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday. The exhibit features 10 artists, some internationally acclaimed, who have a local connection to Guelph, and a progressive interest in Darwinian theory.

The exhibit aims to promote the idea that the arts and sciences are, in fact, very similar disciplines. The artists that were presented in the exhibit exemplify the idea that the two seemingly different disciplines are just different parts of the same practice, in effect debunking the imagined disconnect between the two.

The exhibit also raised obvious questions about our origins, and is a stepping stone in promoting a progressive discourse about the relationship between an artist’s expression and a scientist’s observation.

“Discourse will continue, says McGovern. “I think that the scientific community will only continue to find further evidence of Darwinian theory, and those ideas will continue to be enforced.”

Burnaby Q. Orbax, Baphomet, The Goat of Mendes

Anne Milne

Department of English & Theatre Studies

Anne Milne is a member of a team of five faculty members who make up the University of Guelph advisors committee. Working for over a year, the committee is focused on putting together events to celebrate the year of Darwin.

“I think it was actually the scientists who serendipitously came up with the idea of having an art show,” explained Milne. “Then we found Scott [McGovern], a Toronto-based artist who works at Ed Video Media Arts Centre in Guelph, to curate the event.”

“We saw this as the centre piece for our year of Darwin celebration,” said Milne.

Milne, an English and theatre studies professor, believes that there is a disciplinary connection between the arts and sciences. “I think that [Darwin's book] brings us to thinking about how ideas are communicated in language into the popular mind – how ideas evolve – Darwin had a huge influence on the literary landscape of the 19th century, in Britain in particular,” said Milne.

She asserts that Darwin’s writing, although scientific in nature, had an incredible impact on his own as well as subsequent ages, and provides a cultural context that lives in many novels and poetry from the period.

Christy Langer, Suspended Animation.

Tara Abraham

Dept. of History

Tara Abraham is one member of the University of Guelph advisors committee that was responsible for inspiring discussion around the year of Darwin on campus. Abraham is a professor in the Department of History who brought to the exhibit a cultural and historical look at the work of Darwin. “I teach a course called Darwin, culture and society. The course aims to place Darwin and his work in a social and historical context … We are trying to think about the intermingling of social and scientific theories.” Abraham believes that many people, when considering Darwin’s theory bring in their own ideas and beliefs about politics and religion.

Abraham portrays Darwin as dethroning human beings, who, up until his theory of evolution thought that natural selection did not occur in human beings; that God had a special preordained plan for us on earth. “So even if they excepted something like evolution taking place,” said Abraham, “it was part of a divine plan that God organized.” What was most difficult for people to grasp was the implication that natural selection and evolution occurs in humans. The general public, before Darwin, accepted that the variation in plants and animals was caused by natural selection. But we are special, right? “The idea that it applies to humans,” said Abraham, “and that it’s a random process – that’s what was difficult for people at the time.

Jefferson Campbell-Cooper, Thromboite, Us, 2009

Jefferson Campbell-Cooper

Artist

Jefferson Campbell-Cooper was one of the opening presenters for the reception, as well as the creator of a set of graceful sculptures of thrombolites.

As Jefferson explained in his opening remarks, thrombolites are now an extinct species, which lived eons ago, and were the dominant life form for over a billion years. They created the oxygen which allowed life to begin on earth, and which we still breathe today.

Jefferson was the artist in residence last year in Terra Nova National Park, NF. He was given the opportunity to see the fossilized remains of many geological features, including the fossilized thrombolites, of which there are only a few intact. They’re massive formations, 8 X 10 ft. in diameter and preserved in limestone, so humans today can sit on them and realize their history and significance.

These fossilized stone-like structures inspired the creation of a set of sculptures, two of which now grace the University of Guelph campus.

“They were the dominant species for a billion years and they created all our oxygen,” said Campbell-Cooper.  He feels passionately about the importance of these structures: “As an artist, as a scientist, as a human being, that’s overwhelming just to comprehend. All the plants, and the way the oceans and sky are today can all be traced back to thrombolites, so I thought I should build a sculpture with that as inspiration,” he said. They’re modeled on the experience of sitting on something that has the ability to talk about geologic time, the experience as a human to be confronted with time through the traces of these beings.”

Campbell-Cooper’s thrombolites were constructed out of cement because it was the closest available material to limestone; he hopes to eventually create life-size thrombolites out of stone. In the meantime, Campbell-Cooper hopes the Guelph student body will sit on the sculptures, and share a sense of wonder and appreciation for all that evolution has provided humanity with.

Mat Brown

Artist

Mat Brown is an artist and illustrator working out of Toronto. Brown’s work runs parallel with the exhibit – the common thread being evolution and history.

Brown’s works are extremely detailed accounts of specific pre-historic and historic events which helped to shape the face of the earth in our present day.

Before McGovern approached Brown to take part in this celebration of Darwin, his work covered many of the ideas that Darwin focused on. “This is a private project,” Brown said, referring to his work. “It’s actually a book I’m working on. It’s an illustrated chronological history of the earth according to biology … with the exception of the fact that I have human figures in all of the time periods.”

Brown includes humans in his explanatory illustrations, asserting that our knowledge of these histories “is only possible because of our human consciousness, our society and our culture.” Brown’s conceptual ideals are presented in this idea. “So the human being is really a necessary part of imagining the deep history, or the past, or imagining anything other then the present for any other animal. We have the past, present and the future because we have such complicated minds.”

Brown chose to participate in this exhibit because he has always been a huge fan of science, specifically biology. This deep and passionate interest in biology and natural history is apparent in his work, as well as in the detailed description he gave of history the of our planet as one of the speakers at the opening reception of the exhibit.

For Brown, the link between science and art is so interwoven that it appears in his work as a single entity. He believes that science and art are merely different aspects of the same practice.

Matt Brown, Devonian

Jenn E. Norton

Artist

Jenn E. Norton, a graduate of Guelph’s Masters of Fine Arts program, showed two videos entitled “Chimera” and “Five Point Rack” which served as her solo contribution to the exhibit.

The two video pieces were played on a screen behind the podium where the reception speakers presented, adding a provocative and fitting backdrop to the opening remarks. Chimera is a piece featuring a red, orange, and yellow cell that has the image of a woman’s face contained in it. The cell pulses and writhes in the center of the screen until it begins to change, as the woman’s form emerges from the centre of the cell, and continues to transform through various stages. Norton said about the origins of this project, “that it was made for a show about icons, and I was conveying the scrutinizing of a star or an icon, by placing that person under a microscope. Then I was doing this play between that idea of scrutiny, and the idea of a star in space…a star is the result of a supernova, like the death of a planet.” The idea of death creating new forms is especially fitting for an exhibit on evolution, and the cellular aspect of the piece was a visually stunning addition.

Norton’s other video is of a classical female face, like that of the Mona Lisa or a Botticelli, which morphs into a monstrous form. It begins as a simple bust, except for an ever-present set of antlers, which grow over the course of the video. When asked about the piece, Norton explained, “the woman goes through phases from grotesque, to sexual, to cutesy and Hawaiian pin up-esque; it’s a form of digital pop art, but with an art nouveau influence in the sense that it’s ornamental.” When asked about Chimera’s place in the show, Norton replied, “I’d say my work is of the imaginary. It’s not referencing a particular study; it would go under the microscopic idea, like observation and looking at things that are intangible…I’m dissecting it somehow, I’m looking at it in this illustrative way but it’s also referencing the scientific method. Also they’re both (Chimera and Five Point Rack) being treated as organisms, as specimens.” Norton’s work added a contemporary, and playful addition to the exhibit.

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