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 imagery 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 of astro-geological-biological lineages across deep space and cosmological time. In the sense that stone stores a memory of deep, cosmic time, brain cells are not the only things that hold memories, or respond to stimuli or thought. Sentience is referenced 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. The cave-like entrance, provides an embodied experience of the data and invites intimate contemplation of expanded scales.