Among the artworks on show at In Plain Sight, which celebrates the beauty in the everyday, is a never-before-seen piece by leading British digital artist Dominic Harris.
Discover more about Spectrum, which sees the artist return to the subject matter of butterflies with digitally hand-painted renderings brought to life in an interactive environment in the exhibition's immersive space.
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Other works in artist's oeuvre tend less toward social issues and instead concern the environment. Some of his earliest experiments with butterflies began in 2011 with his Flutter series. This work has both fifty-six and eighty-eight screen versions and features the Morpho Helena in flight. Brought to life via sensors and movements, he placed digital screens against a long mirror, helping us realise the full movement of the butterfly and expanse of its wings. Further series on this theme include Baby Flutter (2012) – an examination of ten separate species of butterfly, some common and others native to specific regions Harris has visited; World Stage (2020) – the digital rendering of butterflies to assimilate world flags at a time when social, political, and national identity were brought to the fore; and Metamorphosis (2020, 2022 & 2023), an exploration of colour with hand-painted butterflies brought to action by touch. The latter are some of the closest iterations to the present work Spectrum, for its integration of hand-painting, touch sensor and colour experiments coalesce in a similarly emotive way.
Dominic Harris’ series Spectrum (2024) is one of the newest examples of his self-coined ‘digital tapestry’ works. The current exhibition, In Plain Sight, plays host to two tapestries, in addition to an interactive space dedicated to the series. These works follow Harris’ digital tradition, featuring an amalgam of touch display, code, electronics, and sensors to proliferate the full effect of his artistic vision.
The series’ title offers many relevant associations. Foremostly, as the Cambridge Dictionary states, it refers to ‘the set of colours into which a beam of light can be separated, or a range of waves, such as light waves or radio waves’. It simultaneously refers to ‘a range of positions, opinions … between two extreme points’ and even again as merely ‘a range of similar things.’ This work, which features multiple species of butterfly in a kaleidoscopic colour-wheel vision, relates to each of the above associations. Designated by colour, with the same Morpho Helena as used in his earlier works, the butterflies are arranged in consideration of their geometric patterning and in their full spectrum of light.
Butterflies have been common motifs throughout art history. As Harman Bains states in his critical essay on Butterflies in Art, this motif is not a ‘recent phenomenon’. Using examples from Vincent van Gogh to Salvador Dalí, he suggests that their popular culture longevity stems from their ‘timeless kindred spirit’, ‘fragility’ and the artist’s capacity to render their tenets to ‘symbolise aspects of human nature.’ More recently, Damien Hirst has produced butterfly mandalas that immortalise the animals in Perspex rounds. In the case of Spectrum, Harris urges us to reflect on the consequences of human intervention on the natural world while encouraging us to celebrate its beauty. We are compelled to acknowledge transience in tandem with monetisation, digitalisation and extinction.
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