Interstellar Space, Nasha, Sydney, 2025 

Installation view. L-R on the wall: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. 

Front, part of Moons

Installation view. L-R on the wall: Pluto, Interstellar, Space

Front, part of Moons

 

Interstellar Space is a solo exhibition by Daniel McClellan centred around a series of planetary paintings. Interstellar Space continues McClellan’s exploration of painting as a system of movements within constraints as seen in his last exhibition with the gallery, Discreet Music. Where Discreet Music used the gallery as starting points for paintings, Interstellar Space uses the planets in our solar system as starting points.

The title of the show is taken from John Coltrane’s album of the same name, a masterwork of free jazz that helped McClellan get back into the studio after a period of conceptual stalemate. A key feature of the album is each track is just a saxophone and drum duet, allowing both musicians more harmonic and rhythmic freedom. Similarly, each of the planetary paintings are the same size and medium to give McClellan more painterly freedom.

Along with the paintings, McClellan has installed a site specific sculptural piece, Moons, which consists of the four columns in the gallery space being scaffolded in mirrors. For McClellan, this piece operates on a thematic level - the mirrors block and reflect light, as do moons in space - and conceptually, the piece continues his interest in space as a spectrum that extends from the Cartesian plane to architecture to outer space.