Shadowscapes: Heaney, JMW Turner and Quantum

9 Oct 2025-1 Mar 2026

Overview

JMW Turner’s 250th birthday is woven through the centenary of quantum physics by artist and PhD quantum physicist Libby Heaney.

Libby Heaney’s Shadowscapes invites us to explore the unexpected connections between JMW Turner, quantum physics and the self. Over the last 100 years, quantum physics has allowed us to see and feel in completely new and surprising ways.  

Award winning artist and quantum physicist Libby Heaney collides JMW Turner’s 250th birthday with the centenary of quantum physics. As the first artist to work with quantum computing, beginning in 2019, Heaney expands on Turner’s experimental approach and passion for technological progress. Step into her interactive dreamlike projection, powered by computer game software and quantum computing. Listen to Turner’s paintings and feel their reverberations with Heaney’s ever evolving digital-quantum sound installation.   

This exhibition brings together amorphous bodies, technology and moments of sublime ecstasy. Taking inspiration from psychotherapist CG Jung, Heaney reinterprets Turner’s use of light and dark as psychological metaphors for her own unruly emotions. Through Turner’s paintings of imagined forces and bodies, Heaney explores her ‘shadow self’ – the parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable, and therefore unconsciously suppress. Personal and deeply self reflective, Heaney’s psychological observations help us to unearth our own unconscious mind and beliefs on the parts of ourselves we tend to keep out of view.    

‘Accessing our shadow selves is important as when shadows are not in our awareness, we tend to project them onto different groups and nature causing polarisation, domination and division.’ – Libby Heaney  

For the first time at Orleans House Gallery, see the JMW Turner paintings that have inspired Heaney’s reflections – The Vision of Jacob’s Ladder (?) (c.1830), The Hero of a Hundred Fights (1800-10, reworked 1847) and Rocky Bay with Figures (1827-30).

As Heaney weaves together the universes of quantum, JMW Turner and CG Jung, you’re invited to reflect on the dark, the light and the quantum.