Enlightenment: The Art of Science

An unremarkable exhibition for those interested in science or art: the photography available in Dovecot's recent exhibition 'Enlightenment: The Art of Science,' could have come from online picture stocks, with some even clumsier than that.

Walking around the tired photos of dogs, eyes and embarrassing photoshop effects the exhibition gives the viewer no impetus to read into the science behind the art. Even when one does, the information is mostly shallow and mundane. Magazines like New Scientist manage to combine engaging imagery with contemporary theories and findings, which stimulate the viewer both intellectually and visually – it remains unclear why the photographer and curators did not look to this and the many other notable precedents of art illustrating science as an aspirational benchmark.

The simplification of the show is potentially an attempt to make the exhibition accessible to both artists and scientists, however the effect is a reduction of complexity to the point of banality.

During the historical period of the Enlightenment, intellectual rigour and rationalism began to rival religion in its capability for explaining the phenomenal world. Whilst empiricism maintains its deserved high status in contemporary culture, it does not assume to surpass or suppress the more irrational and un-quantifiable aspects of human endeavour such as the expression of creativity. Unfortunately this is the impression one is under at Dovecot; photography here is reduced to a tool for creating generic science text-book illustrations.