Portable Black Hole -Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One-

One of the highlights of this years Annuale 2012 is Tom Estes’ performance/ installation- Portable Black Hole at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One.

Remember the Road Runner Show? Simple in its premise, the Road Runner, a flightless cartoon bird, is chased down the highways of the south western United States by a hungry cartoon coyote, named Wile E. Coyote (a pun on "wily coyote"). Despite numerous clever attempts, and the use of a variety of ludicrous devices from that fictitious mail-order company ACME, Wile E. Coyote never catches or kills the Road Runner. But wouldn't it still be cool if there really was an ACME company? Inspired by The Road Runner Show Artist Tom Estes enters the realm of Loonytune physics to create a successful science and pop-media crossover, by making a ‘Portable Black Hole’ from the darkest material ever made. The carpet of carbon nano- tubes, on show at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, reflects 0.045 percent light, making it 100 times darker than a black-painted Corvette according to researchers from Rice University, The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and NASA.

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Estes work Portable Black Hole is part installation and part performance and functions according to shifting locations and contexts. The aim is to move the ‘Portable Black Hole’ around so that it is interspersed between the existing sculptures and the paintings of a museum collection. First staged at the Solomon R Guggenheim in New York, 'Portable Black Hole is intended as a visual metaphor for 'the disappeared'. The work is intended as a reminder of the multiple, idiosyncratic pockets of forgotten histories; of absence and the unseen and unrepresented; multiple conflicting realities that exist side by side with official or recorded ‘histories’. On this occasion, Portable Black Hole is sited at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One, alongside sculptural works from the collection, and important works on loan a major new exhibition 'The Sculpture Show'. Featured artists include Rodin, Degas, Hepworth, Moore, Giacometti, Duchamp, Hirst, Lucas and others, along with photographic and film documentation and with Ron Mueck's enormous A Girl which returns to the Gallery from its world tour.

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Artist Tom Estes' innovative web adventures and conversations are situated within current debates around the ubiquity of new technologies and of the shared delusions of human experience. As part of the work members of the audience and visitors to the museum are asked to take pictures of the performance on their own cameras or on a communal camera that is passed around. The primary source of Estes' recorded images are generated from this kind of public intervention, captured haphazardly on clandestine cameras. The action takes place between moments in the guarding of cultural artifacts and recorded on cameras that are smuggled into instiutional spaces where photography is often prohibited. In this way the audience becomes not only involved with the documentation and the performance but part of a subversive act. The pictures of the performance and the audience participation are published on social networking sites for another, wider online audience to view.

http://www.list.co.uk/event/253543-tom-estes-portable-black-hole/

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/previews/302023-annuale_2012_edinburgh_824_jun

http://www.list.co.uk/event/238442-the-sculpture-show/ You can read more about Portable Black Hole by going to: http://rhizome.org/announce/events/58246/view/

www.TomEstesartist.com