Michaela Gleave, We Are Made of Stardust, 2011-2012, pine structure, LEDs, RGB controller, 2.30 min colour loop, 400 x 120 x 300cm

Michaela Gleave continues her long term fascination with knowledge systems and ponders our place within reality in her latest solo exhibition Universal Truths. Inspired by a research residency with the CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science Division and building on from a successful solo exhibition at ART HK 2012 with Anna Pappas Gallery, Gleave casts her eye out to the furthest reaches of time and space, questioning the essence of reality and the fate of the universe through perceptually challenging wall works and a large-scale LED structure. The exhibition poetically engages with light, space and the formation of meaning.

We Are Made of Stardust (2011-12), the centrepiece of the exhibition, is a large-scale billboard-like structure, installed in the space with its back to the viewer.  Dominating the room with its saturating light, the LEDs on the face of the object display the work’s title as they scroll continuously through the colours of the rainbow.  Dripping with wiring and exposing all of its mechanisms, the object faces away from us, the sensation of colour being the primary experience of the work, the poetry of the text – a meditation on the vastness of existence and our place within it.