​Theia

6 July to 10 August

Preview 6 July, 12pm to 6pm

 

 

In the 1980s geophysicists became aware of two mysterious areas buried very deep in the Earthtowards its core. One was sited beneath the Pacific Ocean and one beneath Africa and each hada composition that is very different from the surrounding mantle (the layer between Earth’s coreand it’s surface) They were hotter and denser and contained unusually high amounts of iron. Eacharea spread out for thousands of kilometres, the size of continents.What

 

These areas were remained a mystery until in 2023 a team of scientists proposed a theory that is getting widespread acceptance. They argued that the layers were the leftover remnants ofa planet that had crashed into a very young Earth. Experiments suggested that the composition ofthese strange embedded fields were the same as that of the Moon and they suggested that thecollision resulted in parts of that planet being embedded deep in the Earth and part forming theMoon.They called this lost planet Theia, after one of the twelve Titans of Greek mythology. Theia was thedaugher of the Earth Goddess Gaia and the mother of Helios (the Sun), the Selent (the Moon) and Eos (the Dawn) and was the goddess of light and vision.

 

Yet few ancient sources mention Theia;like the planet she gave her name to, she is something of a buried figure. After the scientists hadnamed the buried planet Theia, another team of scientists hypothesised that through colliding intoEarth, Theia brought water to the previously rocky planet, allowing life to eventually develop.Theia then; a Greek goddess who is little mentioned outside the writings of Pindar and Hesiod.And a hypothesis of part of a lost planet buried deep beneath our feet. A giver of water, and byextension life, but hidden deep near the Earth’s core.

 

Theia lends her name to this exhibition aswell of four artists; Rafaela de Ascanio, Alicia Reyes McNamara, Noga Schatz and Amy Steel.Each makes works where femme or female figures emerge from their surroundings of land, earthand backgrounds to hover uncertainly on the surface of things before perhaps disappearingagain. Their presences are precarious but affirmative, suggestive of an alternative order to things.They are presences that are always there but which have been pushed beneath the surface, to liein wait until the moment is right to emerge.