About

Following her practice-based PhD at the University for the Creative Arts, Peta Jacobs centres her work around László Moholy-Nagy’s seminal 1917 question: “Space, time, material, are they one with Light?” Her theoretical inquiries delve into the elusive "immaterial substance" shared by quantum physics and Eastern mystical traditions. By presenting shifting perspectives relative to the viewer’s position, her work actively challenges the nature of certainty and human perception.

Her doctoral research was a deep dive into the nature of light, seeking to unfold new aesthetic possibilities while exploring the metaphysical questions of duality and wholeness. While Western thinking often uses dualities to separate, her work aims to overcome these binary oppositions. By unifying contrasts—art and science, real and illusion, light and dark—without stripping them of their unique qualities, she hopes to offer a space for different thinking.

Using optical materials like beam splitters—tools typically used in science to determine if light is a particle or a wave—she developed several series of investigations that present fresh insights into art. This process of "thinking-through-making" allows her to question our assumptions about reality, specifically the entangled relationship between the viewer and the art. Rather than providing absolute answers, her practice interrogates the potentiality of uncertainty, creating visual forms that allow others to experience these quantum questions firsthand.

Awards and Residencies
- Winner of the 31st Takifuji International Art Award, Tokyo, Japan in 2010
- Artist in Residence, UCA, Farnham, England, 2012-2014.
 

Contact: petajacobs@gmail.com