Ent- (non-earthly delights)

Installed in Regent’s Park, Ent- (non-earthly delights) (2024) is a dramatic blue-bodied and golden-tentacled ‘Q-borg’ (quantum cyborg) accompanied by two augmented reality (AR) experiences. It is the latest chapter in Heaney’s ongoing multimedia project Ent- which uses Hieronymus Bosch’s painted triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1490 –1500) as a prism through which to highlight the potentials and pitfalls of quantum technologies. 

Heaney says of her Frieze Sculpture commission: “This new installation thinks about life in the parallel realities predicted by quantum physics. It continues my exploration of quantum hybrid creatures; strange entanglements of human, animal and machine.”

On view in the Project Space is a new unique print titled Ent-er the quantum cyborg (2024) in which Heaney further explores the entangled hybrid form she has brought to life in Regent’s Park. Digitally printed on a mirrored gold Dibond aluminium panel – a material the artist has utilised since 2022 – the work layers quantum-edited textures with fragments of the animated AR experience, and images of the Q-borg itself. The amalgamation of bodies combines queered references to sculptural depictions from antiquity, such as the Laocoön Group, reclining figures in Renaissance painting such as Titian’s Venus of Urbino, and the small Paleolithic figure the Venus of Willendorf. Biomorphic blue flesh oozes from the industrial chamber of a machine, and metallic tentacles, partly inspired by the gold plating of quantum computers, writhe and pulsate. 

Connecting to the AR in Regent’s Park, visitors can also encounter Ent- (Many Paths Version) (2022) in which one navigates through quantum materiality using a computer game controller. Fundamental to Heaney’s Ent- project is the notion of quantum superposition, or “the ability for one thing to be in two or more possibilities at the same time”. It is these parallel states which lend quantum  technology speeds that exponentially surpass the digital. Pursued intensively by governments and big tech companies, quantum’s vast computational ability is set to impact our lives dramatically in the near future. Ent- (Many Paths Version) invites audiences to dip their toe into the quantum-age.

Completing the installation are two clear solid hard-sculpted glass works, Growler and Sneaky Feelers (both 2024). Glass is a material Heaney has repeatedly experimented with in recent years, fascinated by the uncanny similarities with quantum particles. Both ‘melt’ and become fluid at certain temperatures; glass at around 1500 degrees Celsius, and matter becomes wave-like and fluid at absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius).

These sculptures explore a state of in-between, where the glass assumes a slimy quality,  neither solid nor liquid. Slime is a recurring motif in Heaney’s practice, symbolising the unstable nature of reality and the monstrous nature of self. It is also an entangling substance between all life forms – there is no form of multicellular life that does not contain some sort of slime, mucus, or viscous gel. In combination with projected video Heaney sees her clear glass sculptures as petri dishes for entangling images of the environment. By testing the physical limitations of glass, Heaney reflects on whether the fantastical world described by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) where everything is upside down – even logic – could equally be ascribed to the quantum world?

In the VR Room is the piece Heartbreak and Magic (2024) a highly personal work for the artist in which she brings her experimentation with quantum computing into virtual reality for the first time. Drawing on Heaney’s own experience with sudden loss and grief it explores the non-binary and non-local qualities of quantum physics to offer alternative perspectives on how we think and feel about the self and existence. Please book a time slot below to guarantee your chance to experience the 15 minute piece. Heartbreak and Magic was commissioned by VIVE Arts and first presented at Somerset House in February 2024.

Ent- (Many Paths Version) was produced for the exhibition Calder and the 21st Century, Nahmad Contemporary, NYC, 2022. The original immersive version of Ent- was commissioned by LAS (Light Art Space) and first exhibited at Schering Stiftung, Berlin 2022.