Karen Sewell - Awakenings

Awakenings is an immersive work that offers an immediate and potentially sustained encounter. It speaks of the unknowable and unfathomable spiritual, mystery and beauty of natural phenomena and acts as a threshold into the terrain of the numinous. A large levitating partially concealed object of uncertain substance radiates dancing, shifting fields of colour and light that change as a viewer moves around and under it.

I am interested in the intersection of art with spiritual experience and aspire to create installations that activate a possible awakening to wonder or a liminal moment of encounter with the unseen. The concept of the numinous speaks to the realms of our experience which cannot be quantified, explained, or contained - our intuition, and our feeling-states; our connection to the cosmos, and for some, a sense of the divine.

The circle is the primary geometric symbol in this work and relates to sacred geometries which have a very long history. Its symbolic meaning is associated with life and it’s cycles, wholeness, unity and infinity. Sacred geometries, termed by Galileo ‘the language of the universe’, are trans-cultural existing in nature, architectural structures and art. The music of the spheres, harmonics and music are related to the planets and their distance from one another and the sun. The sphere can evoke the heavens.

The opening event is Friday 14 August, 5-8pm.