Current Exhibition:
THE PLANETS WITHIN:
A FIBRE COSMOLOGY

Curator: Angela Clarke

Italian Renaissance Philosopher Marsilio Ficino (Florence: 1433-1499) looked to the heavens and the planets to understand our world and human nature. His philosophies shaped the course of Renaissance art and informed the most famous paintings of his time such as Botticelli’s La Primavera (late 1470’s). He firmly believed, along with his patron Cosmo de Medici (1434-1464) that our personalities were not only shaped by the alignment of the planets at our birth, but if we surrounded ourselves with the images of the planets would become more of what that planet represented.  The moon made us more mystical, Saturn made us mysterious and moody, Mars made us more warlike, and Jupiter made us more authoritative and powerful. The images of comets, also, made us prone to moments of Divine inspiration.  The five textile artists in this exhibition, Linda Coe, Barbara Heller, Rosemary Burd,  Terry Aske, and Thomas Roach create work which embodies Ficino’s beliefs. Utilizing the media of textile which encompasses art forms associated with the domestic and personal, they explore how the planets provide an enduring fascination for humanity even in out modern technological age.  In our contemporary world we still have an innate need to connect with the heavens and contemplate the complex and little understood planetary influences over ourselves and our universe.

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