This exhibition explored Lucretius’s concept of the Clinamen, borrowed from Epicurean atomism.  It describes the unpredictable swerve of atoms as they move through space.  These atomic interactions and collisions, caused by the clinamen, are the trigger for cosmic events.  Lucretius believed without this unpredictable swerve, free will would be impossible due to determinism and an objective universe as we know it would not exist because necessary atomic interactions for complexity wouldn’t occur.

The Clinamen bridges the invisible atomic world and the tangible classical world of objects and form. It’s the same blip of data, the perturbance in the fabric of the universe, that brings things into existence for as part of our experiences.  Similarly, these paintings engages with material phenomena, energy and atomic vibrations, moving from intuition to visual sensations.

 Paul Thomas, Quantum Art and Uncertainty. Bristol: Intellect Ltd, 2018.