Art Exhibition — MJ Sharp’s "Nightscapes"

Nightscapes features a selection of landscape and still life photographs exploring MJ Sharp’s fascination with preserving the human relationship to night and darkness.
As a Fulbright Scholar to the UK, MJ Sharp collaborated with a nocturnal ecologist who is also concerned about escalating light pollution and our loss of night and darkness. Archaeologists in Cornwall have newly discovered evidence that prehistoric peoples visited ancient megalithic sites in low light or at night. Sharp was intrigued and set out to photograph these ancient sites at night, hoping that it “might be restorative for present-day people who have lost access to their evolutionary birthright of experiencing darkness and night.”
Craven Allen is pleased to show and offer the first printed work from this important body of images, which up to now have only been seen as projections, most recently in her solo show at the College of Wooster Art Museum in Ohio. Also on display for the first time will be still lifes from the past from the past five years, and select night landscapes that have not been previously shown.
In the two decades that MJ Sharp has been exploring “the dark and the liminal” in her photography, the increasing effects of light pollution have only strengthened her connection to this unique photographic approach. “A vanishingly small percentage of our evolutionary time as human beings has been spent in artificial light” she explains, “now, for a large percentage of the world’s population, the experience of night is quickly becoming a boutique and exceptional one.”

Monday–Friday 9:30 – 6, Saturday 10 – 4