Patsy Payne, Looking for AUSSAT 1h 6m +8° 15 min exp, 2026 relief print on Kozo. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
In 1961, the Polish-Australian astronomer Antoni Przybylski discovered that the star HD 101065, a rapidly oscillating Ap star at roughly 356 light-years from the Sun in the southern constellation of Centaurus, had unusual chemical properties.
Star HD 101065 had an overabundance of rare earth elements, namely strontium, holmium, niobium, scandium, yttrium, caesium, neodymium, praseodymium, thorium, ytterbium and uranium and a scarcity of more common elements such as iron. Subsequently, it has been known as Przybylski’s Star.
The London-born artist Patsy Payne, who for many years was the head of print and drawing at the Australian National University School of Art and Design, has devoted her most recent ‘project’ to this star, culminating in her major exhibition at the Megalo Gallery in Kingston.
Patsy Payne, SUD3843 Bloemfontein 1964, 2026, laser-engraved plywood. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
Payne was conducting research at the Mt Stromlo Observatory when she came across a glass plate image identified as the star HD 101065.
Beautiful glass slides and the Canberra link with Stromlo and Przybylski whetted her appetite, and she went to explore this rabbit warren in great detail. She tracked down other glass slides from the observatories in Arequipa (Chile), Mt St John (New Zealand) and Bloemfontein (South Africa) to add to those at Stromlo.
She assembled her database with the earliest glass plates from 1897 and the most recent from 1980, all caught in the history of tracking and recording our universe.
Payne observes, “I am struck by a kind of physicality of time held on the plate. The light that the emulsion-covered plate held in the telescope has been travelling for ‘light years’ (hundreds and thousands of them) on a scale that makes a human lifetime feel so small.
“Whatever we search for or see has already been and changed or gone. The exercise in trying to understand seems to me to be both futile and exquisite.”
Patsy Payne, Folded space NZ003, 2026, Miura folded relief print on Kozo paper. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
The exhibition consists of five laser-engraved plywood panels and 27 prints, some realised as relief prints on Japanese Kozo paper, others as intaglio prints on Somerset paper or as relief prints on three-dimensional honeycomb paper. There is a preciousness and intrigue about all of the exhibits – a sense of magical intimacy.
There is this kinetic process of distancing and translation as the telescope probes the depths of space to record an image that is then transmitted over an incomprehensible distance.
This is recorded on a fragile and now obsolete medium of a glass plate slide, accompanied by a paper sleeve recording human observations. Here, within a fairly short period of time, the record is eroded on Earth, becomes almost illegible and has to be scanned into a different data storage system.
Patsy Payne, Letting the light through (AUSSAT), 2026, relief print on honeycomb paper. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
Payne, in her titles, employs star numbers that are largely meaningless to those outside the circle of astronomers, which adds to the sense of enigma about the work.
The laser-engraved panels, such as SUD3843 Bloemfontein 1964, and Kozo paper prints, including Looking for AUSSAT 1h 6m + 8º 15 exp., are some of the highlights.
For me, possibly the real treasures are the three-dimensional honeycomb prints, including Three-dimensional deformation 5 (NZ2277) and Letting the light through (AUSSAT).
Of the 30 or so solo exhibitions that Payne has held, I have always been amazed by the broad scope of her interests, from exploring the human body to exploring the universe.
She examines the physical evidence from a scientific perspective – apart from her training in the visual arts, Payne also holds university degrees in archaeology and science – and then layers this with emotional, aesthetic and memory responses that do not belong in the scientific world.
Her exhibitions are explorations – thought adventures that excite the eye and challenge the mind.
Patsy Payne, Three dimensional deformation 5 (NZ2277), 2026, relief print on honeycomb paper. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
Patsy Payne: A most peculiar star is at the Megalo Print Studio and Gallery, 21 Wentworth Avenue, Kingston. It’s open Tuesday to Saturday, from 9:30 am to 5 pm. It closes on 10 October.
