Seek Pray Advance | Virtual Exhibition | Virtual Gallery

Quad Gallery
Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, Derby, DE1 3AS

SEEK PRAY ADVANCE by Megan Broadmeadow is an episodic exhibition charting the journey of the ‘Ordinary Person’ as they become an extra-religious leader. It is based on real-life testimonies from those who have purportedly had encounters with beings from other worlds, dimensions and realms, across multiple periods in history.

Episode 3 – Operation Starlight at QUAD concludes the trilogy and features the new Virtual Reality (VR) commission Above the Firmament as part of immersive exhibits in the gallery space. The exhibition is the culmination of UK tour that has seen the narrative unfold across gallery exhibitions, festivals, fashion shoots and performances. Weaving together Jungian psychological archetypes, sci-fi tropes and personal stories Broadmeadow's mixture of immersive installations, film works and VR creates an epic other-worldly dimension in QUAD Gallery.

For Episode 1 – Eyes Only at CGP gallery in London the audience ventured to a far-off planet via an immersive installation designed to give them an alien eye’s view of Earth. Sheo’l, a parallel dimension film set in a cave, featured the Ordinary Person (played by both male/ female actors that never meet one another), post alien contact, as they simultaneously descend into the bowels of the earth and their own consciousness. In the final moments they meet the Mother of All Personas who gives them a mysterious Box. In Episode 2 – The Fourth Kind at Green Man Festival the Box is seen crash landed and much bigger than before.  Over the course of a weekend it revealed images, visions and experiences of the Ordinary Person through a portal inside its structure. Episode 3 - Operation Starlight for QUAD reveals the beings responsible for calling the Ordinary Person to join a ‘Intergalactic Hierarchy’. The viewer is taken on a surreal journey in VR through nebula like spaces, filled with these otherworldly beings who swoop and fly around them.  The viewer experiences the space usually reserved for the chosen ones: the space Above the Firmament and beyond the heavens. The space in which the Ordinary Person will end their journey… in this dimension at least…

SEEK PRAY ADVANCE is a project and co-commission partnership between QUAD, Derby, Southwark Park Galleries (formerly CGP London), and Green Man Festival. Supported by Arts Council England, Derby City Council, Southwark Council, The Paul & Louise Cooke Endowment. Further support by Arnolfini, Bristol, The Gane Trust, CCQ magazine, Paper Folds Records, and Chapter Arts Centre.

Megan Broadmeadow Bio:
Megan Broadmeadow (b.1978) is a British artist of Welsh Heritage who creates immersive exhibitions and events. She studied at Slade School of Art (2003) and Goldsmiths College (2014). In 2015 she was awarded the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, and in 2018 was honoured to make the National Eisteddfod of Wales' special commission "Carnifal Y Mor" in collaboration with Welsh musician Gruff Rhys.
Recent Career highlights include solo exhibitions at CGP, London, Plymouth Arts Centre, 2016 Standpoint London, 2016, Galeria Melissa, London 2015 and commissioned work for Cardiff Contemporary, 2016 and Green Man Festival 2018.

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