Polarised Vision consists of 35  embroidered tapestries suspended 2 meters above the ground. The surface of each piece is embroidered with a different reproduction derived from Percival Lowell’s archival drawings of Mars. From the 1890s to the 1910s, Percival Lowell (1855 - 1916) obsessively recorded his observations of the red planet through hand drawings, and through this action sought to prove his belief that the surface of Mars was covered in irrigation canals. Lowell strove to demonstrate the existence of an advanced but dying civilisation on the red planet, devoting his life to endless sketching of perceived artificial formations across the planet's landscape. A combination of faulty telescopes and cultural obsession with the possibility of other life drove this fantasy of the red planet being green, an idea shattered by the 1964 Mariner 4 Probe relaying the first camera captured images of the barren Martian Landscape. The Mariner mission had itself been planned with reference to Lowell’s drawings, its photographic relays serving as severe correctives of his drawings.

Polarised Visions re-situates these works of scientific enquiry as memorials of a life’s obsession rendered invisible by subsequent scientific revolutions. The laboured act of embroidery serves as an echo of Lowell’s obsessive telescopic observation and recording. The use of organza, woven with interlocking contrasting threads, reflects the sight of Lowell’s astronomical telescopes, which used polarising filters as a means to better “see” the Martian canals. The polarised organza changes in hue with respect to angle, so that, as the viewer moves through the installation, different details of the tapestries are revealed and obscured.

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