For her first solo exhibition in Oslo, Jessica MacMillan has turned our solar system into a sculpture park. Consisting of three 3D-animated video works, Everyday Moons brings us to the orbits of Earth, Mars, and Uranus, where MacMillan has created a new moon for each planet: one of porcelain coffee cups, one of straw-berries, and one of wool socks.
The imagery in the videos was developed in collaboration with Dr. Charles H. Lineweaver, a professor at the Australian National University’s Planetary Science Institute (PSI). The pair worked together to imagine what a landscape on each of these moons might look like—for example, how big can the mountains be on a moon of socks at a specific diameter, or what sort of atmosphere would a moon of strawberries need in order to keep them from freezing instantly in space.
The videos visualize the phenomenon of gravitational collapse—the contraction of an astronomical object due to the influence of its own gravity, which tends to draw matter inward toward the center of gravity. In other words, it is that which makes things spherical in space. Smaller bodies such as asteroids and comets are often irregular shapes, because their mass is not large enough for gravity to overtake other binding forces of their material. But as the mass of a body becomes larger, there is a specific point for every element when gravity takes over and begins to pull it into a sphere. It can be seen here on Earth: when walking along a mountainside and dirt or stones roll down a hill, it can be thought of as the Earth become a just a bit more spherical.
Jupiter, vol. I
In addition to these video works, for this exhibition MacMillan has published her first photo book, Jupiter, vol I., in which she documents the last five years of her encounters with the planet Jupiter. Each time she notices the planet Jupiter in the sky, she points to the planet, and takes a photo with her phone. In each photo, Jupiter is seen as a white dot. On each page in the book, the white dot has been placed in the same coordinate—meaning that some photos, because of a low or high location of the dot within the image, may bleed partially off the top or bottom of the page. Jupiter becomes the constant, while everything else around it shifts.
Through video, sculpture and installation, MacMillan’s work uses ordinary found objects, geophysical orientation, and optical instruments to investigate concepts in astronomy and planetary science. By placing familiar, everyday objects in astronomical contexts, she aims to domesticate the larger scales of reality and create a connection through the tactility of daily-life experience.
Supported by Norsk Kulturråd (Arts Council Norway) and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Norske Billedkunstnere
(Association of Norwegian Visual Artists).
Jessica MacMillan (b. 1987, New Hampshire, USA) is an artist and amateur astronomer that lives in Oslo, Norway. She holds an MFA in fine arts from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo (2016), a BFA in sculpture and art history from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (2010), and has studied astronomy through Arizona State University. Recent solo presentations of her work include exhibitions at Galleri 54 in Gothenburg, Sweden (2018); Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, Seydisfjordur, Iceland (2017); and at Studio 17 in Stavanger, Norway (2017). In 2019 she was an artist-in-residence at Örö Island, Finland, and at Ny-Ålesund research station in Svalbard. In June 2020, she will have an additional solo exhibition in at Noplace, Oslo.
Supported by Norsk Kulturråd (Arts Council Norway) and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond, Norske Billedkunstnere
(Association of Norwegian Visual Artists).
