Gail Wight
Working primarily in sculpture, video, interactive media and print, I attempt to construct biological allegories that tease out the impacts of life sciences on the living: human, animal, and other. The interplay between art and biology, theories of evolution, cognition and the animal state-of-being are themes that have, over the last two decades, become central to my art.
Recently, my imagination has fixed on the topic of deep time. I find myself craving a better understanding of the unknowable past. What were the sounds and smells of the Mesozoic? What was it like to rock back and forth in a Cambrian sea? I look at the ground differently as I walk, feeling time receding miles below its surface. I try to imagine ancient shorelines in desert patches and swamps covering barren plateaus. It seems so relevant, speeding along a freeway constructed of pulverized river beds and seashells. I’m looking for prolonged chords, where the deep past resonates in the present.