Shelley James

Shelley James’s intricate glass sculptures both fix and confound our gaze. They play with our understanding of space and time, inviting us to experience the process of perception first hand and enjoy the delicious disorientation of optical illusions that unpick the weave of expectation and reality. In this show, we are asked to question what we see, to examine the dialogue between perception and experience, eye and brain.

The work on show explores different approaches to shaping reality: from two dimensional patterns to three dimensional shapes and onto four dimensional forms that embrace time. James has collaborated with crystallographer Professor Brian Sutton to create pieces that capture the evolution of how we understand the physical world. Starting with the subtle rhythms of two-dimensional lattices and moving into the temporal relativity of the five-fold quasi-periodic lattice, as defined by Sir Roger Penrose that extend to infinity without repetition, vibrating with possibility. To encapsulate these divergent symmetries, she has developed new techniques that include printing in hot glass and fusing together folded planes in cast glass forms.

These crystalline, illusory spaces transfix and disorient. They embrace the fugitive nature of spatial perception — uncertain and unbound — to examine the tension between seen and unseen worlds, internal structure and external form. Her work invites us to question the frameworks of our own perception and explore the boundaries between appearance and expression, material and virtual space.

This exhibition is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (principal funder).