STARFIELD

John Cox
Installation and painted star maps along the Milky Way.

16th — 22nd August
Friday 16th, 11 — 4pm
Saturday 17th, 11 — 4.30pm
Monday 19th - Wednesday 21st, 11 — 4pm
Thursday 22nd 11 — 1pm

Closed Sundays. Free admission.

The installation puts up eight panels intended as a background for children's work in a short term exhibition display Climate Change All Change at the former Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green. The panels show the constellations along the galactic equator, some not visible from the northern hemisphere, some not visible from the south, forming a whole planet circuit of constellations, science based and without astrological signification. However, the opening of the show coincided with Covid restrictions introduced March 2020 and the exhibition was withdrawn. The panels were to have had sections cut out to accommodate the foreground displays, but the panels were never installed and remain in the uncut condition in which they are now shown.

The panels show the brightest nearby stars viewed along the galactic plane. The stars are shown coloured violet to red according to seven classes of spectrum, violet to red. The complete circuit of the galactic plane is shown, and some panels overlap where they were to have met the foreground displays. In the present show painted star maps are introduced into some of the gaps between panels.

The layouts for the panels were made with drawings from the astronomical catalogue imaging program Starry8 written by Richard Monkhouse in collaboration with John Cox. Those drawings were squared off and scaled up to the boards. All the painted starmaps seen in this show began this way.