Anish Kapoor鈥檚 explicitly invokes religious themes, but for me, it also raises the kind of questions about reality and the nature of space-time that scientists immerse themselves in.
Take his gigantic, 4.5-tonne Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto, named for the biblical mountain in Genesis where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son. Kapoor inverts the mountain, suspends it from the ceiling of the gallery and soaks it in shining red pigment that looks like blood and exposed flesh 鈥� or is it lava?
Viewing the piece, you feel as if you have been transported to another world, or even ventured inside a living planet. To me, it was also a reminder of the ancient relationship between geology and biology.
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Another room contains Kapoor鈥檚 piece Ha Makom, which takes the form of an immense rocky, crimson landscape with a rectangular black portal in the centre. The work draws on the presence of the divine, according to Kapoor. The title derives from a phrase meaning 鈥渢he place鈥� in Hebrew and is also influenced by Kapoor鈥檚 visits to Uluru in central Australia, which he has described as 鈥渢he most religious place I鈥檝e ever been to鈥�. The black void looks like an alien artefact, like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I found myself longing to enter the portal to see what is on the other side.
Ha Makom is one of several pieces involving the wonder pigment Vantablack, a substance made from carbon nanotubes that absorbs 99.96 per cent of light. With Vantablack, Kapoor creates voids and what appear to be rifts in space-time. The effect is to leave us dizzy and confused; it鈥檚 a taste of what a physicist might experience when trying to understand the fabric of reality.
Other works showcase Kapoor鈥檚 use of polished steel, making massive curved, reflective surfaces that not only defy inspection, but seemingly Newtonian laws too. One convex, tinted, circular mirror appears to be a flaw or pore in reality, and you find yourself staring into it and feeling a deep sense of both mystery and longing.
And then there are Kapoor鈥檚 startling, even shocking, sculptures representing human organs. Some are contained in massive transparent plastic wraps, bulging and dripping with blood. Others are piled on huge steel trays. To describe them as visceral is to seriously understate things.
This must-see exhibition provokes awe, wonder, laughter and revulsion. Kapoor, like all our greatest artists, depicts his understanding of the world, of reality, in ways that complement scientific investigations. The show runs until 18 October 2026.
![Janette Kerr PPRWA Hon. RSA, Twenty Solargraphs from the Solargraphic Project 2020-24 Formless 2024-25 (exposure time 18 months) Solargraph on paper Kerr collaborated with communities in Iceland, Greenland, Shetland and Somerset, to record the slow passage of time in different landscapes. The solargraphic process is a form of long-exposure photography. Kerr captures the arc of the Sun, as it moves across the sky from dawn to dusk, on photographic paper sealed in DIY pinhole cameras made from drinks cans. Her approach combines science and art, chemistry and the digital processing of the final image. Slow Time. The Sun rises and falls each day, its gradual trek discreetly recorded by small tin cans whose uninterrupted gaze captures every photon of sunlight travelling across the sky. Solargraphy (from the Latin solar, of the sun, and graphia, writing) is a form of long-exposure photography that captures the Sun moving across the sky. It combines science and art, chemistry and [today] digital elements. Being able to capture an extended period of time in a single frame, far beyond the capacity of the human eye, is incredible enough, but even more amazing is how simple it is. A low-tech process, solargraphy typically uses pinhole cameras made from used drinks cans. Sheets of black-and-white photographic paper can be sealed inside the cans, and then the cameras are fixed outdoors, facing south [in the Northern Hemisphere]. We usually think of photography as an instant process, images captured digitally in a fraction of a second. Solargraphs by Kerr have been recorded over a period of 1?18 months, mapping landscape in slow time. Light waves are captured as they travel through the air, passing through a pinhole in the side of the can and slowly etching an image on photographic paper curved around the inside. The resulting images are shaped by landscape and the Sun?s daily elevation. Actions of the environment ? rain and other elemental detritus, or the can?s unexpected movement ? also leave traces on the final pictures, yet moving objects leave no trace. Solargraphy is a ?printing-out? process: this is where an image forms on photographic paper solely through the action of light, without using chemicals to develop the image. Light provides the energy required for silver halides (salts) in the photographic paper to change to a visible state. When silver halides are exposed to light, free metallic silver atoms are ?liberated?, forming a latent image. Over a prolonged exposure of several months the silver halide particles clump together, increasing in size. The photographic paper slowly becomes coloured, transitioning from yellow to sepia and then pink, even slate grey. (In traditional photography, the latent image would be chemically developed in a darkroom.) For contemporary solargraphy, the image captured on the paper can be scanned and manipulated, using a photo-editing program on a laptop, to form a digital record. A solargraphic project was initiated by Kerr during various residencies, and in collaboration with communities in Iceland, Greenland, Shetland and Somerset. The final images that she produces show the Sun?s progress as an accumulation of arcing and streaking lines, leaving ghostly exposures of landscape seen in slow time, out of phase with human activity. w3w: ///reporters.survived.formless (Coleford, Somerset) 2024?5 Solargraph on paper (exposure time: 18 months) 21 x 30cm COURTESY OF THE ARTIST](/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/13121542/SEI_284359025.jpg?w=300&h=225&crop=1)