Brodie Ellis's 'Visitations' exhibition brings together painting and ceramic sculpture to explore the rare and spectacular appearances of four comets—Leonard, Atlas, ISON, and McNaught—whose journeys across our skies are shaped by cycles of deep time. The project draws inspiration from Max Ernst’s painting Humboldt Current (1951–52), adopting his method of layering paint over textured surfaces to evoke the turbulence and energy of both oceanic and cosmic flows.

For Ellis, the orbits of these comets are vast arcs, carrying primordial material from its earliest epochs. Each return is a rare encounter, a momentary crossing of cosmic and earthly experience that connects us to the solar system’s ancient past and uncertain future. In Visitations, the comet paintings employ subtly textured surfaces to capture the sense of movement, dissolution, and renewal that defines each comet’s passage.

Alongside these works, experimental white raku ceramic forms evoke the fragmentation, luminosity, and interconnectedness of cometary bodies and cosmic cycles. The raku process’s unpredictability mirrors the dynamic, often violent evolution of comets as they near the Sun. These ceramic forms reference both the dispersal of cometary dust and the invisible forces that bind cosmic and terrestrial systems.

Visitations invites viewers to contemplate the parallels between oceanic upwellings and cometary passages—each a visitation that disrupts, enriches, and transforms its environment. The exhibition shows us examples of encounters that bridge the cosmic and the earthly, and celebrates the deep timescales that shape the rhythms of our universe.

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