These photographs, in their different ways, allude to the complex ways in which art and science co-exist, sometimes sharing a single vision while at others occupying a much more ambivalent and uncertain dialogue.

In unnatural histories, Paul Kilsby stages meticulously constructed tableaux using taxidermy specimens; we see night time encounters with birds as the predators and ‘wrong’ insects as their prey. This series of images creates a critique of the ‘nature-as-spectacle’ genre of television documentaries made famous by David Attenborough. Kilsby’s fictions share the exaggerated aesthetic of the genre with their larger-than-life detail. However, these images don’t pretend to be authentic and his strategy calls into question the ostensible ‘truth’ such heavily-edited and contrived television series purport to convey.

In geometria, Kilsby explores the belief held by many in the West since the time of Plato that underpinning reality are certain timeless mathematical shapes and structures. We see this, famously, in the Golden ratio and the Fibonacci series as manifest in certain flowers and seashells, for example, and employed in the compositions of Piero della Francesca and Raphael. In some degree, science, at least until the time of Newton, seemed to corroborate these ideas. Kilsby’s photographs explore these beliefs in fundamental mathematical order, structure and equilibrium – but also fragility, precariousness and jeopardy, obliquely alluding to the crises we are facing in the Anthropocene.

This exhibition is proud to be part of this year’s Oxford Science and Ideas Festival

Exhibition Opening
Tuesday 1 October 2024 6-8pm

Please join the North Wall Arts Centre to welcome in this new exhibition.

Free event / no booking required

In Conversation
Tuesday 15 October 6.30 – 8pm

Paul Kilsby will be in conversation with James Attlee, author and Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

Family workshop
Saturday 19 October 1.30 – 3.30pm

Free