Parent Body Physically manipulated soy-ink print on tissue, chalk and clay pigments, chrome metal, water, clamp.
c. W3 × H2.2 × D2.5m. 2025.
Installation views: The Geological Unconscious, Hypha HQ, London. 2025.
Hill’s sculptural print installation Parent Body uses scanning electron microscope data of samples recently returned from asteroid Bennu. The data features details of carbon-rich and organic ‘nano-globules’ which are theorised as being ‘proto-cells’ and speak to astro-geological-biological material lineages across deep space
and cosmological time. Sentience is evoked via Gaston Bachelard’s idea of water being the eye of the landscape. A drop of water falls into a pool on the ground, whose reflection extends the interior space of the sculpture into a hydrous, rippling mirror world: an eye at the stone’s interior, looking into its parent-body water world. (Current evidence suggests Bennu is a fragment of a larger, parent body water world). The cavernous formation invites a looking into – evoking the inner space of memory. The sculpture provides an embodied experience of the data and invites intimate contemplation of expanded scales. The ambiguous rock-like yet flowing forms echo the words of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen ‘stone is fluid when viewed within its proper duration’. Hill's large-scale prints evolve and can adapt to various exhibition spaces and contexts.