Transcending the Invisible art exhibition

The invisible world of nanophotonics took centre stage in Scatterings, a recent exhibition at the Arcade in Bush House that showcased a unique collaboration between artist David Penny and CPLAS physicist Dries Maurice.

The exhibition emerged from Penny’s residency with the Department of Physics at King’s College London, where he worked closely with Maurice to explore the behaviour of light at the nanoscale. The resulting works, created without cameras or digital sensors, used lasers and photographic paper to make visible the fleeting moments when light interacts with matter, phenomena that even the most powerful microscopes cannot capture.

A highlight of the exhibition was Across Paths and Into Fields, a series of black-and-white images that trace laser movement through a Raman spectroscopy system, an instrument central to Maurice’s research. The light doesn’t merely illuminate these nanostructures; it alters them, and in turn, creates the artwork.

The Transcending the Invisible initiative, is funded by the Royal Society and led by CPLAS Co-investigator Dr Sasha Rakovich. Scatterings is a striking example of how scientific research and artistic practice can inform and enrich one another. Through Maurice and Penny’s collaboration, CPLAS staff members continue to champion approaches that make cutting-edge science more tangible and more human.