Upcoming Exhibitions
THE GALLERY
Brian Aldiss Exhibition 16th Aug-29th Sept
BRIAN ALDISS’s first published story appeared in 1954, heralding an internationally sucessful literary career that has produced bestselling contemporary and science fiction novels, short stries, poetry and non-fiction. But along with the words came the pictures, streaming from the other hemisphere of the author’s brain.
To mark Brian Aldiss’s 85th Birthday, the JAM FACTORY presents the first public exhibition of his non-verbal work. As with his writing, Aldiss displays a cunning proficiency with differing media. ‘THE OTHER HEMISPHERE’ illuminates that part of his artistic vision that has until now remained hidden from the public.
Aldiss says he was struck by the beauty of the human brain when he saw his own brain under examination. Of course, there is more complexity to the brain than that contained in the two hemispheres; below them lies the cerebellum, and the nerve connections with the spinal chord.
Higher cognitive functions communicate with lower, and those with inheritors of deep time. Deep time that lurks far beyond our relationship with apes, back to the cynodonts swimming in the Paleo-Tethyis Ocean - creatures emerging from the extinctions of the Permian era, some 280 million years ago.
You can see how long it takes to rear an artist - or an English football player...
To venture down these cranial connections is to plunge back in time. Why should we want to do so? Because we are finite, and so we long for the infinite. Aldiss’ writings and artwork make at least a small gesture towards the infinite, and to what remains inarticulate.
Just as apples originated from Kazakhstan in Central Asia, so what was to become part of us had its first stirrings in that mythic imagined sea.
[DNA proves that all apples originated in what is now Kazakstan, where the Mongols first broke and rode the horse.]