FORTY YEARS ago this summer, Commander David Scott conducted an experiment on the moon.
On the final walk of the Apollo 15 mission, he performed a live demonstration dropping a hammer and a feather in the vacuum of the lunar atmosphere. With no air resistance, both hammer and feather hit the surface at the same time, proving all objects fall at the same rate, just as Galileo had proposed hundreds of years earlier.
Now this lunar experiment and the philosophical prose, artistic training, and aesthetic observations that informed Galileo’s experiments and hypotheses, have inspired an art exhibition which opens in Galway this evening.
Hammer and Feather – Experiments in Space opens at The Niland Gallery, this evening at 6pm and it will run until Saturday July 2.
It is a group exhibition featuring Tim Acheson, David Beattie, Karl Burke, Cecilia Dannell, Angela Fulcher, Dana Gentile, Ann Maria Healy, Clare Lymer, Laura McMorrow, and Victoria McCormack.
The Niland Gallery, Merchants Road, is open Friday and Saturday from 12 noon until 5pm or by appointment. See www.engageartstudios.com
