Julie F Hill
Julie F Hill’s work responds to the vastness of nature as represented by modern science. She employs an expanded approach to photography and image-making, creating sculptural works that explore conceptions of deep-space and time. Through her works she attempts to dissolve the imposed boundaries between Earth and space, extending consciousness of what constitutes nature.
IN THE DEBRIS OF PLANETS
Hill’s recent work has been interested in asteroids and minor bodies of the solar system. These fossil remnants from the creation of the solar system are theorised as having delivered lively elements to earth that potentially kickstarted life: they are our origins.
In the debris of planets asserts our kinship with these cosmic entities, highlighting their significance in the face of looming colonial expansion into the outer space environment and extraction of asteroidal mineral resources.
The work comprises a filmed sculptural model of a landscape made from planetary surface simulant of a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid and two-way mirror. The soundtrack is a choral work devised with singer Eleanor Westbrook, that provides a speculative listening to the asteroid regolith. Inspired by Elizabeth Povinelli’s remarks in Geoontologies about ‘the movement of the experience of noise (phonos) into the experience of sense (logos)’: How might we attune to or come to hear the ‘voice’ of the extra-terrestrial non-living?
Experientially, the work alludes to a spectral zone of contact where we can intuit our entwined ancestry with these cosmic entities.
Filmed visualisation of installation: 2-way mirror, carbonaceous chondrite asteroid regolith simulant, choral work – a speculative listening to the asteroid regolith – performed by Eleanor Westbrook
