Output details

Cryptosphere : Mapping Paradise [Large modular sculptural system]

Cryptosphere was an exhibition, residency, conference and publication based on my original research and artistic response to the map collection of the Royal Geographical Society, London. It was funded by the Leverhulme Foundation and the Arts Council England. It was project-managed and curated by Parabola, a London-based commissioning organisation. I systematically documented early modern maps that considered mythical places as physical locations and developed a sequence of maps demonstrating the evolution of Western cartography from a mythological to a scientific framework. This was the first artist residency staged by the RGS. It also directly engaged with science and belief and was positioned within debates on post-secularism. The work was interdisciplinary in scope with consultation and contributions from scholars and thinkers on this hybrid topic.

Outcomes were an exhibition at the RGS exhibition space on Exhibition Road in April/May 2008 and a book documenting the process and discussing the research findings. The exhibition consisted of a new installation whose originality was to embody my research on the physical construction of mythical places into a large modular sculpture. The extensively illustrated book, "Cryptosphere", was published by Parabola with essays by leading academics and writers including Denis Cosgrove; the late Alexander von Humboldt, Professor of Geography at UCLA; Denis Alexander, director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge; Dr Alessandro Scafi of The Warburg Institute; Rebecca Geldard, a London-based art critic and Jordan Kaplan, curator with Parabola.

A symposium attended by some 60 academics, artists and the public was held on Friday 9 May 2008 with presentations from myself, Dr Catherine Souch, head of Research at the Royal Geographical Society, Prof Felix Driver, RHUL, and Dr Alessandro Scafi. The outputs engaged contemporary art and cultural geography audiences as well as members of the public visiting Exhibition Road.