The LUMENS 2018 Italian residency finished with a group exhibition in the local church. The theme this year – Astronomia, Arte E Religione.
For a fortnight, a group of 20 artists lived and worked together in an old nunnery building in the mountains of Atina. The aim was to enter into creative experiment as the Perseid meteor shower traced milky streaks across the skies.
Each night we looked up, photographed, shared what we knew about the constellations and the stories that animate them. Evenings went late in shared excitement, laughter and curiosity, spotting meteors burn up overhead. Spontaneous cries of joy and frustration echoing through the night, when people saw – or just missed – the brief appearance of these distant streaking specks.
During our star-gazing late nights, the stories of the skies helped me find my way with recognising the stars. It is finding the traces of the swan’s open wings that helps locate the Cygnus constellation. The earth and skies are populated with stories, the shapes of animals, warriors, ships and musical instruments bring recognisable patterns from the complexity. My enquiry on residency was to listen to the dreams of the residents. When a group of people are deeply focused on the meteors, do traces of the events become visible in our dreaming minds?
At the end of our time there, it was an honour to welcome the people of Atina into the residency exhibition in the Cathedral to show the bounty of art and photography that were created across the weeks.
On the flight from Rome back to California I felt a lot of gratitude for programmes like this and for the rare and precious connections created by having time to go deep and get lost in the night. Here’s the book I made drawing the dreams that the resident artists reported to me on the days of the Meteor showers: Atina Dream Book. And photographs.
The Lumens show is opening in London in January 2019 and includes work by: Rachael Allain • Sakchin Bessette • Mark Cheverton • Tim Corne • Kimberley D’Adamo • Dovile Dagiene • Nettie Edwards • Sarah Gillett • Luke Harby • John Hooper • Risa Horowitz • Marty Langthorne • Becky Lyon • Hanna Mattes • Heather Merckle • Aliya Orr • Phil Power • Hannah Pratt • Arezu Salamzadeh • Harry Stevenson Miller • Armelle Tulunda • Katharine Vega • Brenda Vega & Sergio Sarango • Georgia Watkins • Adele Watts • Won Young Chang
Of the Spheres 