Ellen K Levy - Seeing Through

A site-specific exhibition by multimedia artist Ellen K Levy, reinterpreting the collections of the D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum. The ideas and collections of D’Arcy Thompson, the University’s first Professor of Biology, have profoundly influenced many artists and writers who re-interpret natural history, projecting it through the lens of evolution, fantasy, consumption, fear or desire. This unique exhibition features site-specific prints and video works in the Tower Foyer Gallery with additional elements in the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum (open on certain days only). “Seeing Through” proposes tours of Thompson’s collection visualised as if through the lenses of futurist author J G Ballard and pop-artist Richard Hamilton. We visit the collection through dizzying perspectival renderings of merged organic/machine hybrids, eco-catastrophes and space travel, as alluded to by Hamilton and Ballard. Levy’s speculative exhibition explores our synergistic relationship with technology, including our aspirations and its threats. Our notions of evolution are, themselves, evolving.