Kelly Richardson: Pillars of Dawn

29 Mar-2 Jun 2019

Overview

Artist Kelly Richardson has spent three years imagining a world at one remove from our own, working with digital imaging software to create a vision of the near future. In each of her works, we encounter millions of glistening crystals that have somehow encrusted every square inch of the planet’s surface. The artist pushes the limits of what our eyes can register, the mind can conceive of, and the most high-tech computers can calculate. Each crystal has been ‘sculpted’ in three dimensions, so that in each work, there is one crystal for every extant species on Earth. ‘Pillars of Dawn’ presents us with what seems to be the dusk of humanity ̶ the sixth great extinction ̶ where only the hardiest of trees seem to survive. These are akin to photographs outside of time: from either the Earth’s earliest days or humanity’s final hour, acting as documents of nuclear conflagration or environmental depredation.