Ilana Halperin: Encounters from Outer Space!

Glasgow-based artist Ilana Halperin has been researching and developing ideas for a contemporary art exhibition inspired by National Museums Scotland’s collections. The exhibition, The Library, is open from 24 May-29 September 2013. Over the past few months, she’s been looking through National Museums Scotland’s collections, finding out about minerals, fossils, molluscs and rocks and uncovering some fascinating stories. In this series of blog posts, we share some of the fantastic things she’s found.

It’s not often that you get close to something from outer space, but when meteorites hit the Earth they actually make new objects too. Artist Ilana Halperin has been looking at some of these close encounters, and finding out more about things like Tektites. Ilana explains:

 “A tektite is related to meteorite, but is formed from the Earth. When a meteorite hits the ground it melts the material around it and throws it up into the air. This melts and the reformed material is the tektite. I see a tektite as embodying the moment of contact between the meteorite and the surface of the Earth. I thought that this was beautiful, a preserved moment of contact between outer space and the Earth.”

Australite (tektite), small deformed brown metallic disc, from Uralla, Harding County, New South Wales, Australia
Australite (tektite), small deformed brown metallic disc, from Uralla, Harding County, New South Wales, Australia.
Moldavite (tektite), glassy translucent green with rough crispy surface, from Czechoslovakia
Moldavite (tektite), glassy translucent green with rough crispy .surface, from Czechoslovakia.
Indochinite (tektite), dull black elongated dumb-bell with surface pitting, from Villa Alliance, Da Lat, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam
Indochinite (tektite), dull black elongated dumb-bell with surface pitting, from Villa Alliance, Da Lat, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam.

You can visit Ilana’s website here.

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