"This Collapsed and Expanding Breath" Exhibit at JAC

“This Collapsed and Expanding Breath”

April 25—June 14, 2025

Jamestown Arts Center – Open: Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Megan and Murray McMillan

About the Exhibition

How do cycles of collapse and renewal shape our world? In This Collapsed and Expanding Breath, Megan and Murray McMillan examine the rhythms that govern both the cosmos and human relationships. Through an immersive installation of video, photography, and sculptural works, the artists construct a poetic meditation on motion, interconnection, and transformation.

At the heart of the exhibition is a newly commissioned video installation, filmed at the Jamestown Arts Center. This work juxtaposes choreographed movement with sculptural elements inspired by celestial mechanics—evoking the gravitational forces that shape both cosmic and familial bonds. Expanding parachute-like forms, floating spheres, and shifting light create an environment where breath and planetary motion intertwine, blurring the boundaries between the personal and the celestial.

Incorporating astrophotography from the dark sky reserve in Far West Texas, the video weaves together imagery captured near the McDonald Observatory, where radio telescopes listen for pulsars—rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit rhythmic pulses of radiation. These celestial signals, formed through stellar collapse, echo the unseen forces that structure our own lives. Like the pulsars' cyclical pulses, the choreography of the video explores the push and pull of relationships, embodying cycles of expansion and contraction, presence and absence.

The exhibition also includes The Shifting Space Around Us, a related multichannel video and photographic series exploring cycles of disassembly and renewal through movement and performance. Originally presented as a live film shoot on a rotating train turntable, this work extends the exhibition’s inquiry into how space collapses and reforms, mirroring both cosmic and relational dynamics.

A central sculptural component features modified 19th-century circular knitting machines, reimagined as astronomical observation devices. These intricate machines, originally designed for interwoven and automated processes, become metaphors for the unseen forces that shape both human interaction and the universe itself. Like the stars, they spin in cycles of formation and dispersal, linking mechanized motion with the vast, unknowable expanse of space.

This Collapsed and Expanding Breath invites visitors into a world where the gravitational forces of human connection mirror celestial rhythms—where expansion and contraction, structure and dissolution pulse in an unending cycle. The installation transforms the gallery into a space both alien and deeply familiar, where the cosmic and the personal fold into one another in an immersive experience of light, movement, and sound.

Special thanks to Roger Williams University and Tufts University. 

About the Artists

Megan and Murray McMillan are collaborative artists who create immersive video installations that merge performance, sculpture, and architectural spaces. They have exhibited at venues such as the Kunsthallen Brandts in Denmark, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA. Their work has been featured in international film festivals and biennials, and they have participated in residencies across the U.S. and Europe. Megan McMillan is a Professor of the Practice at SMFA at Tufts University, and Murray McMillan is a Professor at Roger Williams University.