Simon De Boer

A Telescope Pointed at Time

May 16th – June 3rd, 2023

The silence dispersed among the deep green and blue waves of the sea connects diverse stories, experiences and perspectives beyond comprehension. An understanding that will never fathom the impact on the lives of individuals that those waves helped shape over generations, and continue to sculpt today.

This ongoing project scopes the generational changes and understanding of events told through story, media, family history research and archives. Centralising the biographical writing of a seaman; Smith from the British Royal Navy and three ships they were associated with throughout their naval career, and life thereafter. These ships form the foundation of the project to probe the micro and macro narratives, experiences and perspectives that arise when thinking through the topology, latitudes and longitudes of the sea. Scoping its complex relationship to interpreting experiences of the past.

To better understand various forms of displacement and discontinuity, alluding to ideas of home, I composed a series of paintings and text pieces that adopt archival images, writings, topologies, diagrams, fiction, films, and other things drawn from research and biographical writing. Reflecting on what was documented, and the silences and gaps that remain.