and per se and: part IV - Katie Paterson & Laurence Sterne

and per se and is a rolling sequence of exhibitions where one work is paired with another for two weekly periods, across a stretch of 12 months. Katie Paterson’s ALL THE DEAD STARS, is a work of epic proportions, charting the 27,000 stars that have died in our Universe since records of such phenomena began, until the time of the work’s making in 2009. The result is a 2 by 3 metre laser etched aluminium map, made in collaboration with scientists and researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of University College London. It depicts an Aitoff projection of the ‘visible’ Universe arranged along lines of Galactic longitude and latitude with every dead star represented by a single etched mark. It was first exhibited as part of Altermodern , the Tate Triennale in 2009 and remains one of Paterson’s seminal early works. After our showing it will next be exhibited at the Yokohama Triennale in August 2017. On 19th April THE APOCALYPSE by Albrecht Dürer is replaced by the nine volumes of Laurence Sterne’s THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY  - with the pages of Volume One turned to the infamous black page. Sterne’s novel (the first volume of which appeared in 1759) with its sliding and irregular narrative is often cited as the first expression of a kind of modernism more usually ascribed to twentieth century writers such as Becket or Joyce. The simple, monochromatic rectangle of black that accompanies the death of Yorick prefigures a kind of total abstraction, and is joined with one of Paterson’s images of deep space; a photograph from her HISTORY OF DARKNESS series - images of darkness from different times and places in the history of the Universe.