Tim Hughes is enlightened by a visual journey through the Periodic Table at Compton Verney art gallery

Gold rings, silver chains, iron bars, copper coins…

The chemical elements are the building blocks of the universe and their various properties have, since mankind’s earliest days, endlessly fascinated us.

More often than not we take them for granted. Of the 118 elements (natural and synthetic) which surround us, only a handful are widely recognised.

We all know what iron, carbon and tin look like, but what about palladium, ruthenium or yttrium? More interestingly, how can we portray the elements in the Periodic Table as art? That’s easy enough with gold and silver, of course, but what about cobalt, uranium or mercury?

A groundbreaking exhibition at Compton Verney does just that.

Based on the best-selling book Periodic Tales: the Curious Lives of the Elements, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, it explores the ways in which the elements in the ever-expanding Periodic Table have inspired artists over the centuries.

The results are often beautiful, sometimes striking and always thought-provoking.

Far from merely rendering items in curious materials for the sake of it, there is a dialogue here between form and material, style and substance; the pieces acting as an expression of the elements utilised in their construction.

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The exhibition pulls together pieces from some big-hitters of the art world, among them Antony Gormley, Cornelia Parker, Jospeh Beuys, the Heatherwick Studio, David Nash and Marc Quinn. But there are also items of antiquity whose makers are unknown.

A shell-decorated mercury bottle from 1905 has been loaned by the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, and serves as a a reminder of this toxic element’s use in ritual. It sits beside some exquisite – though utterly impractical, and probably rather risky – mercury earrings by Lucia Nogueira.

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Flattened: Cornelia Parker’s Thirty Pieces of Silver

A Cycladic lead figurine dating back to 2800BC shares a room with vibrant blue copper sulphate-encrusted car engines (Roger Hiorns’ Nunhead) Danny Lane’s Blue Moon – a solid pool of cast cobalt glass of the deepest blue – a frozen tropical rock pool on the floor.

Thought-provoking pieces include Cornelia Parker’s Thirty Pieces of Silver – 30 silver-plated dining pieces crushed by a 250 ton industrial press and suspended by metal wire – a representation of the precarious veneer of middle class aspiration represented by silver plate with a clear Biblical reference.

It took curator Penelope Sexton and her team three days to install. The message behind Parker’s beaten wedding ring is also obvious.

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Molten silver: Mark Quinn’s The Etymology of Morphology

Also striking is Antony Gormely’s FUSE, a classic Gormley-esque life-size cast iron man, which lies rusting and angular on the floor as if at a murder scene, and Quinn’s The Etymology of Morphology – a melting figure rendered in silvered glass, and bearing a resemblance to the quicksilver robot from Terminator 2.

Most visual of all are the items made from uranium glass, which when illuminated give off an eerie green glow, such as Ken and Julia Yonetani’s lurid Crystal Palace chandelier.

Oxford Mail:

Crystal Palace: a glowing uranium glass chandelier by Ken + Julia Yonetani

We are assured the pieces are safe, but they are nonetheless unsettling – especially Kate Williams and John Lloyd’s models of three nuclear power stations – Springfield, Sizewell and Dounreay – the first being a depiction of the fictional power plant from The Simpsons.

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Radioactive: Springfield nuclear power plant by Kate Williams and John Lloyd

That sense of playfulness and ingenuity runs through this exhibition, which more than any science lesson, brings chemistry alive in all its kaleidoscopic glory.

Where and when
Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements, at Compton Verney, near Banbury, until Sunday, Dec 13. comptonverney.org.uk