PAULINE WOOLLEY DYCP 17 2023
SOLAR TREE 2022 - Annie Maunder Category Winner, Astronomy Photographer of the Year
The making of this work derived from my research into carbon-14 traces found in some studies of tree-ring dating or dendrochronology.
Twenty-six images of the Sun from the first part of Solar Cycle 25 have been layered to create concentric rings. The oldest ‘ring’ lies in the centre while the most recent sits furthest away. Month by month, the rings expand or ‘grow’ to form the rings of an imaginary solar tree. The overall image is a marking of the passing of time, which incorporates visual evidence of increasing levels of solar activity apparent in the dark markings of solar flares.
I inhaled your stardust
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth…were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
Carl Sagan
I inhaled your stardust, is a follow on from a body of work made for a book dummy called The Sky Calls to Me and is the reworking of the final images created over a period of a year during and after my Father’s death. Work was made at my urban home and the rural home of my childhood with a focus on slower analogue techniques to capture the light from our nearest star.
Seasonsphere (NG20/21)
Single Video Channel with sound 2:18 mins
Collaboration with Katie Sandoval
During a 24-hour day our planet spins on its axis. Over the course of 365 days our planet orbits the Sun. With or without our awareness the mechanics of our universe continue moving. While the pandemic sweeps our globe, these celestial happenings continue their own path regardless of our own perceived and distorted experience of time. During 2020 we experienced transformation, rebirth and resurrection. As part of Backlit's lockdown 'Sharebears' collaborations and exhibition, Pauline and Katie have forged a virtual connection, inspired by the ever-changing garden views through their windows. Garden spaces have become comforting friends, urban skyscapes have become trusted companions, both equally opening scenes of incredible drama, beauty and calm. Day by day, month by month, the passing of time has been a gift to the present. The Aztecs saw time as a fusion between the past, the present and the future. In this endless cycle, colourful gods presided over the spiral of time and events in parallel universes. This collaboration explores the fusion of these elemental forces through painting, photography and astronomical exploration.
Writing Skyscapes
Look at the stars! look up, look up at the skies! - Gerald Manley Hopkins, 'The Starlight Night'.
Writing Skyscapes is an exhibition of words and images inspired by the sky and inviting you to 'look at the skies!' When we look up at the sky, especially with today's technologies and devices, we might assume that we are able to see more, to see more clearly, or to see further. While this is true in some senses , the more we look at or to the sky, the more that we find ourselves questioning both what we are seeing and where we are.
Featuring photographs by Michael Beard, Dan Brown, Helen McGhie, Pauline Woolley and Katherine Eva Young, as well as from the Hubble Herritage Project, Writing Skyscapes considers these other issues relating to how we see and imagine what is above us.
Chasing Suns
I had read a few years back that the sun rises and sets in different arcs over the planet depending on two facts: our visual relation to the equator and the seasonal time of year. I wanted to visually experience this for myself and became impelled to embark on a technically challenging undertaking to evidence these facts. Here begins Chasing Suns, a long-term photographic project spanning various locations in Europe and Asia who's objective is to gain the truth of our closet star's movement across the sky. Exposures of one minute to 24 hours record not only the sun's movement, but also the atmospheric conditions of the event. Over exposed paper negatives record an extended glance of this daily occurrence, an occurrence unable to be observed by the human eye. On combining images from differing equatorial points, a visual language, a language away from the complexity of scientific mathematical equations emerges. However. the use of multiple apertures and the over layering of images brings into question the scientific validity of the images. as the aesthetic nature of the photographs starts to emerge. The end struggle being the empirical endeavour verses the romantic notion.
Beyond the Celestial Sphere
Single channel video with sound 4 minutes 42 seconds
Beyond the celestial sphere follows the reflected image of the sky as the sun travels beyond our know sky. Influenced and planned using free open source planetarium software, Stellarium, the imagery also references the historical astronomical art of the past.
Using a combination of newly created visual and sound recordings made during lockdown, the static imagery takes on movement that pushes us beyond the sky of an urban Nottingham garden into the realms of the unknown and beyond what we can see and understand.
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