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Mendeleev's revenge
culturelab
Mendeleev’s revenge A new show with chemistry at its heart has no choice but to fail gloriously
Simon Ings
THE haunting, slightly bilious yellow-green of uranium glass fascinated Victorian interior designers. Uranium metal glows green in ultraviolet light, and this property lends uranium glass a subtle yet compelling inner fire. The Victorians made any number of knick-knacks out of the stuff. The Periodic Tales exhibition at Compton Verney – a stately home near Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, best known for its collection of British folk art – boasts a piano foot, an ornamental castor fashioned to spread the weight of a parlour piano. It is mildly radioactive, which triggers all manner of safety protocols. “We installed it using special gloves,” says Penelope Sexton, the exhibition’s curator. “I shudder to think what any passing Victorian would have made of us.” Sexton is leading Compton Verney’s long-term campaign to become a contemporary arts venue and attract day visitors from all over the UK. Periodic Tales combines simple objects made from different elements – a tiny lead figurine from the Aegean islands is the oldest, dating from around 2500 BC – with art that draws contemporary mischief from Dmitri Mendeleev’s worldchanging periodic table of the elements. Before modern chemistry, it was assumed that the properties of fundamental materials were Periodic thinking: John Newling’s Value; Coin, Note and Eclipse 46 | NewScientist | 7 November 2015
innate and could be combined. struggle for purchase. Simon By that logic, blending sulphur’s Patterson’s periodic tables of yellow and mercury’s sheen ought celebrity are facile. And Cornelia to have made gold. Mendeleev, Parker’s circle of crushed silver a Russian chemist and inventor, ornaments is almost as pretty as spoiled that dream in 1869 by a well-lit silver object would have codifying the elements we been had she not crushed it in the recognise today in a table that first place. Maria Lalic’s chrome reflects a profound atomic reality mirrors are pure Ikea. we know to be true but cannot But there are some stunning directly see. successes, too. The frames of John To read the periodic table is to be confronted by how baffling the “The periodic table is a masterpiece of objectivity. world is. Solids, liquids and gases Its truth refuses to be nestle against each other for anthropomorphised” reasons that cannot be unpicked by simply resorting to an intuitive understanding of the humanNewling’s wall-mounted Value; scale world. The queer thing about Coin, Note and Eclipse capture the calling this show Periodic Tales is alchemical transformation of a that there are no tales to tell, only living plant into gold coinage, by a stunned acknowledgement that way of pressed kale leaves and the one can, in the same moment, judicious application of gold leaf. both be handed the keys to the It is a narrative piece, rooted in material world, and firmly locked the safe ground of material out of ever intuiting it. production, value and exchange. The artworks Sexton has chosen It is significant, I think, that
other standout pieces also explore the way some elements are more or less effortlessly turned into cultural signs – quite literally in the case of Fiona Banner’s neon Brackets (An Aside). There is much else in the show worth seeing: Danny Lane’s Blue Moon makes cobalt positively drinkable. And there’s plenty to think about with another work by Parker, Stolen Thunder, which is a display of handkerchiefs stained by the tarnish rubbed off famous objects. But, counter-intuitively, the real draw is the necessary failure of the show. Sexton has brought us right to the edge of what art can do to communicate science, and then some. But Mendeleev’s table is a masterpiece of objectivity. Its truth refuses to be anthropomorphised, moralised upon or otherwise domesticated. Periodic Tales was bound to fail, and does so, splendidly. n
John Newling, Value; Coin, Note and Eclipse, 2011-12, Arts Council Collection, London.
Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK, to 13 December
Mendeleev’s revenge A new show with chemistry at its heart has no choice but to fail gloriously
Simon Ings
THE haunting, slightly bilious yellow-green of uranium glass fascinated Victorian interior designers. Uranium metal glows green in ultraviolet light, and this property lends uranium glass a subtle yet compelling inner fire. The Victorians made any number of knick-knacks out of the stuff. The Periodic Tales exhibition at Compton Verney – a stately home near Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, best known for its collection of British folk art – boasts a piano foot, an ornamental castor fashioned to spread the weight of a parlour piano. It is mildly radioactive, which triggers all manner of safety protocols. “We installed it using special gloves,” says Penelope Sexton, the exhibition’s curator. “I shudder to think what any passing Victorian would have made of us.” Sexton is leading Compton Verney’s long-term campaign to become a contemporary arts venue and attract day visitors from all over the UK. Periodic Tales combines simple objects made from different elements – a tiny lead figurine from the Aegean islands is the oldest, dating from around 2500 BC – with art that draws contemporary mischief from Dmitri Mendeleev’s worldchanging periodic table of the elements. Before modern chemistry, it was assumed that the properties of fundamental materials were Periodic thinking: John Newling’s Value; Coin, Note and Eclipse 46 | NewScientist | 7 November 2015
innate and could be combined. struggle for purchase. Simon By that logic, blending sulphur’s Patterson’s periodic tables of yellow and mercury’s sheen ought celebrity are facile. And Cornelia to have made gold. Mendeleev, Parker’s circle of crushed silver a Russian chemist and inventor, ornaments is almost as pretty as spoiled that dream in 1869 by a well-lit silver object would have codifying the elements we been had she not crushed it in the recognise today in a table that first place. Maria Lalic’s chrome reflects a profound atomic reality mirrors are pure Ikea. we know to be true but cannot But there are some stunning directly see. successes, too. The frames of John To read the periodic table is to be confronted by how baffling the “The periodic table is a masterpiece of objectivity. world is. Solids, liquids and gases Its truth refuses to be nestle against each other for anthropomorphised” reasons that cannot be unpicked by simply resorting to an intuitive understanding of the humanNewling’s wall-mounted Value; scale world. The queer thing about Coin, Note and Eclipse capture the calling this show Periodic Tales is alchemical transformation of a that there are no tales to tell, only living plant into gold coinage, by a stunned acknowledgement that way of pressed kale leaves and the one can, in the same moment, judicious application of gold leaf. both be handed the keys to the It is a narrative piece, rooted in material world, and firmly locked the safe ground of material out of ever intuiting it. production, value and exchange. The artworks Sexton has chosen It is significant, I think, that
other standout pieces also explore the way some elements are more or less effortlessly turned into cultural signs – quite literally in the case of Fiona Banner’s neon Brackets (An Aside). There is much else in the show worth seeing: Danny Lane’s Blue Moon makes cobalt positively drinkable. And there’s plenty to think about with another work by Parker, Stolen Thunder, which is a display of handkerchiefs stained by the tarnish rubbed off famous objects. But, counter-intuitively, the real draw is the necessary failure of the show. Sexton has brought us right to the edge of what art can do to communicate science, and then some. But Mendeleev’s table is a masterpiece of objectivity. Its truth refuses to be anthropomorphised, moralised upon or otherwise domesticated. Periodic Tales was bound to fail, and does so, splendidly. n
John Newling, Value; Coin, Note and Eclipse, 2011-12, Arts Council Collection, London.
Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK, to 13 December