Sarah Callesen - Drawing, Synopsis and Song

For the first exhibition of the 2020 Gallery Programme we are pleased to be showing Drawing, Synopsis and Song, a series of works by Sarah Callesen celebrating, through poetic translations as visual and aural artworks, the life and legacy of German astronomer and mathematician, Maria Cunitz.

“Just as matter makes sound, then, so does any process in which two or more material bodies come into contact with each other… Everything then is expressive, not only embodying a form but for ever forming an embodiment… Everything is in noise, and noise is in everything.” - Greg Hainge ‘Noise Matters’

Taking inspiration from the numeric systems of musical notation developed by German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven (whose 1974 artwork gives this exhibition its name), Sarah Callesen has for several years been exploring the translation of image and sound, culminating in this collection of astrological data sets, represented as kinetic sculpture, sound, video, diagram, and drawing.

This collection of works is also informed by the life and legacy of 17th-century German astronomer and mathematician Maria Cunitz, whose contributions to astronomy were recognized in the naming of the Cunitz crater on Venus.

Central to Cunitz’s legacy is her treatise of 1650, Urania Propitia. The Urania consisted principally of a series of tables, refining and correcting the observations of Johannes Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables. Due largely to her immense capacity for understanding and clarifying Kepler’s tedious and complex logarithms, and also to her ability to write in both Latin (the then lingua franca for all things scientific) and also German, it is fair to assert that without Cuntiz’s contributions, the reach of Kelper’s work would likely have remained limited beyond the world of scientists and stargazers.

Opens: Wednesday 12 February, 5.30pm (w. refreshments from Liberty Breweries) with live performance from 7pm.

Sarah Callesen is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, from Manawatū. She is currently studying towards an MFA at Elam, the University of Auckland where her research-based practice focuses on the work of influential women whose contributions have been lost, forgotten or otherwise maligned or concealed.

Sarah has participated in the 2018 & 2019 Projects exhibitions, Auckland Art Fair; group shows at RM, George Fraser, and Projectspace galleries. She was a finalist in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award, the Wallace Art Awards, a merit winner and multiple finalist in the Parkin Drawing Prize.