The cosmological eye

Effie Paleologou is a London-based visual artist , whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. As part of MOUTHY, Effie has added to her photographic series 'Microcosms,' which takes a forensic look at London's gum-covered pavements, recording specimens of discarded chewing gum on the streets around London Bridge near the site of Science Gallery London. Effie has also collaborated with salivary researchers at King's College London to take her investigation further. Microcosms is installed in the colonnade at King's College London’s Guy's Campus until 25 November 2016, with other images from the series coming to London Bridge Station billboards 24 October-25 November 2016.  

Below is an extract from essay 'The Cosmological Eye,' by author and filmmaker Iain Sinclair, about Effie's original 'Microcosms' series, published in Photomonitor magazine in September 2015. You can read the full essay here.

The flat world of our city pavements, disregarded by most pedestrians, is revealed, under the intense scrutiny of Effie Paleologou, as significant terrain. A dull carpet of ill-fitting stone slabs, tarmac and fast-food detritus, becomes part of the curvature of the universe. The slightest scars – scratchings of heels, bicycle tracks, old blood, recent vomit, leaves embedded in cracks, rusty rivulets, ice damage – register a history that the questing photographer, a profound scientist of urban alienation, records and exposes.

Paleolougou’s cosmological prints based on that humblest and most intimate metropolitan pestilence, chewing gum, make a metaphorical connection between the bulging pregnancy of the splat on the pavement and the blood-veined eye of the observer. It was a brilliant notion: instead of cataloguing, in the traditional fashion of flanêur or surrealist dandy, shop windows, hats, shoes, dogs, advertisements, Paleologou kept her gaze on the unrolled mappa mundi of the pavement. A monochrome carpet of transience fouled by fossils of gum in patterns that invoked an early star map of the heavens. From the black spots – in which so much could be read – we can imply a vast range of human intercourse. What could some forensic photographer ascertain from the tracings of gum spat out by chomping football managers like Sir Alex Ferguson? The red-nosed fury calculated by the distance the dead wad has been expelled from the restless jaws. The most expensively cultivated grass patches in Britain are littered with contours of gingivitic spearmint.

There is an undeceived sexual tenderness in this album of oral rejects. Dry mouths have been salved by the sugary-sweet coating around a capsule of rubber. The stain on the stone is the DNA of a passing stranger who is brought inside by the intimate processes of the darkroom. Paleologou compares gum-chewing to eating and kissing. But here is an oral transaction without nutritional value. Gum is anti-food. It mimics foreplay, nibble, suck, bite, but must not be swallowed. To swallow would be to choke. Gum is prophylactic, a shield against breath, taste, life.

From her archaeological record of the density of gum-sightings, the photographer conjures up a narrative of passing crowds ‘forming random constellations as if in a parallel universe’. The images are contemporary in their desperation to reanimate the city by recording its most disposable but enduring detritus. And pre-modern in the medieval philosophy of humours, metamorphosis, alchemy. The prints defy category and date of origin. They are Victorian: at the birth of photography, the death of fundamentalist Christianity, the beginnings of psychoanalysis.  

Join Effie in conversation with Iain Sinclair on 3 November, 7-8.30pm in Guy’s Chapel. Effie and Iain will be talking about the themes explored in Microcosms, and the conversation will explore what the Science Gallery London commission has added to this artwork.This event is free but places are limited. Reserve your place.

October 19, 2016