"Permit me," he continued, "to recount to you briefly how certain ardent spirits, starting on imaginary journeys, have penetrated the secrets of our satellite."
- Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (1865)
Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Deceitful Moon is an exhibition in the Hayward Gallery Project Space that explores the moon as a site for misinformation, misrepresentation and mistrust. Touching on a long-standing tradition of hoaxes and conspiracy theories that found its first modern expression in the 'Great Moon Hoax' played by The New York Sun in 1835 (in which a series of newspaper articles detailed life on the moon as observed through a powerful telescope) the show, like the tarot card that bears its name, turns on obfuscation and doubt.
Deceitful Moon is, in part, a response to the current vogue for exhibitions marking the anniversary of major events in world history. But rather than commemorating Neil Armstrong's famous 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind', it pays tribute to a lingering uncertainty somewhere on the dark side of our cultural imagination as to whether human feet have ever touched the moon's grey, inhospitable surface.
While the Apollo 11 mission was concerned with scientific verification and the glory of a nation and of a species, the works in Deceitful Moon propose speculative 'lunar landings' of a different sort. Satires of social and political control share space with meditations on technological absurdity, perception and misperception, and a very earthbound form of moon-gazing romanticism.
Deceitful Moon is curated by Tom Morton, Curator at the Hayward Gallery.
- Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (1865)
Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Deceitful Moon is an exhibition in the Hayward Gallery Project Space that explores the moon as a site for misinformation, misrepresentation and mistrust. Touching on a long-standing tradition of hoaxes and conspiracy theories that found its first modern expression in the 'Great Moon Hoax' played by The New York Sun in 1835 (in which a series of newspaper articles detailed life on the moon as observed through a powerful telescope) the show, like the tarot card that bears its name, turns on obfuscation and doubt.
Deceitful Moon is, in part, a response to the current vogue for exhibitions marking the anniversary of major events in world history. But rather than commemorating Neil Armstrong's famous 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind', it pays tribute to a lingering uncertainty somewhere on the dark side of our cultural imagination as to whether human feet have ever touched the moon's grey, inhospitable surface.
While the Apollo 11 mission was concerned with scientific verification and the glory of a nation and of a species, the works in Deceitful Moon propose speculative 'lunar landings' of a different sort. Satires of social and political control share space with meditations on technological absurdity, perception and misperception, and a very earthbound form of moon-gazing romanticism.
Deceitful Moon is curated by Tom Morton, Curator at the Hayward Gallery.
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