Creative Spiral 2016: Nature, Art and Maths Exhibition by John Hyatt with Jon Borresen

The Artworks 1830 Gallery presents, ‘From a line to...’ which is a year of exhibitions and activities promoting the importance of drawing and its capacity to transform lives. ‘From a line to…’ will go on to include ‘The Bulging Portfolio of Quentin Blake’, ‘State of Line’ (a group survey show of contemporary drawing) and ‘Drawing a Day’ (an artist led, generative residency and exhibition). The ‘From a line to…’ programme opens on the 23rd of October with John Hyatt’s ‘The Creative Spiral’, an exhibition exploring nature, art and maths through digital print, digital sculpture, video, drawing and painting. 

‘The Creative Spiral’ is the result of artist John Hyatt’s scientific experiments with vibrating sand. Interested in observing phenomena at a human scale without the need for expensive microscopes or telescopes, Hyatt built his own kitchen-sink lab equipment to observe how sand moves in wave forms and spirals when vibrated. From this experimental research Hyatt has made hypotheses about form in the natural world and how it evolves from vibration and feedback loops, continually passing through its own centre. He has tested these theories through further playful, creative experimentation in his art. His Digital 3D Model sculptures are derived from derived geometric principles and mutated in cyberspace to manifest as objects. His paintings are the result of drawing a repeated spiral at different scales millions of times over.

For this new exhibition at The Artworks, Hyatt has worked with mathematician, Jon Borresen to explore the spiral form and we show a creative cornucopia of results from their trans- disciplinary inquiry into the dynamic shape that they term, ‘The Creative Spiral’.