THE PLANETARIUM

Below the post war redevelopment that characterises Southampton’s city centre lies a labyrinth of over 100 underground vaults dating back to the twelfth century. For the second year seven of these spaces are being opened every weekend through the summer as exhibition venues. Last year the project, organised by ‘a’ space, attracted 15,000 visitors.

Three artists from east London, Alan Bond, May Cornet, and Dawn Shorten have been chosen as lead artists in the Artvaults project which takes place from July 9th to Oct 9th.

These artists have just returned from a showing in Rome and Artvaults is a development of that show. Dawn Shorten and Alan Bond will be sharing the Castle Vault with pieces about Space. Dawn Shorten, whose work is invariably wry, humorous and deadly serious will show ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, a spectacular reconstruction of a rocket launch. Alan Bond has constructed planetarium consisting of a geodesic dome which sits on a circle of doors scavenged from skips. Light penetrates through hundreds of holes drilled in the dome.

The Planetarium is a response to the form, dimensions and dark of Castle Vault. It develops ideas about space that have informed Alan Bond’s recent paintings in which eroded, scuffed and perforated painted surfaces parallel the cosmic history of collision, creation, destruction and remaking.

In The Planetarium he uses the cast-offs of the material world and makes reference to the world of advertising and consumerism. Exploiting the aesthetic attributes of these re-cycled materials he transcends their source, to create a mysterious allusion to the ethereal beauty of the night sky

Somewhere in this piece are cryptic references to medieval ideas about the underworld, heaven and earth.

May Cornet will show at 94 High Street. Her installation is reminiscent of a laboratory. The illuminated seed boxes suggest a process of cloning but May sees each of the seedlings having the potential to grow into something unique. Delicate, clinical and beguiling, the work suggests a scientific intervention into the natural processes of creation and germination.