Jem Finer Spiegelei

Artist and musician Jem Finer played with reality. The work, known as Spiegelei, was a 360-degree camera obscura housed inside a stainless steel sphere on top of an off-the-shelf shed, which reflected distorted and inverted views of the surrounding landscape.

Visitors were invited into the work to experience a shift in reality, in which the familiar daylight was transformed into a purple haze, the world seemed to turn upside down and sounds are strangely muted.

Jem Finer says: “Gravity is, on reflection, absurd. It’s easy to take for granted but when one stops to consider it, we’re not standing upright at all, we’re all stuck on at angles to each other. We literally are standing as if glued to the surface of the earth, pointing down towards its centre.”

A founding member of rock band The Pogues, Jem Finer originally trained as a computer scientist and musician before establishing a highly respected art practice, in which he continues to push the boundaries of visual and sonic composition.

Spiegelei was originally commissioned for the 2010 Tatton Park Biennial