Moments of Wonder
Mike Collier in collaboration with Tom Jordan
Preview 4 March 5.30-8pm
5-28 March 2026
Mike Collier in collaboration with Tom Jordan and Geoff Sample, Swooping Swifts, Kitaushima, Sado Island, 2026, digital print on 300gsm acid free fine art paper, 100cm diameter
Mike Collier works across a number of media and often in collaboration with artists, poets, musicians, composers and natural historians. His work is based on a close observation of, and engagement with, the more-than-human world.
He has been interested in visualising birdsong for nearly twenty years, and since 2016 has worked with the artist and natural history sound recordist Geoff Sample on a series of pieces based on birdsong recordings. Several are in this exhibition, including the large circular LED work, Song of the Wren – the opera singer of the avian world (2026).
Collier’s love of poetry is wide ranging, and he has recently made work influenced by classical Persian poetry, which describes the beauty of the night sky, the vastness of creation, and the insignificance of human life. Two of Collier’s small circular pieces in the exhibition, originally commissioned in January 2025 by the Aga Khan Centre Gallery in London, serve as a reminder of the transient nature of life and the eternal nature of the cosmos. Some of the images from this work have been developed, in collaboration with artist Tom Jordan and animator and designer Nora Nadvegi, into a thirty-minute animation (included in the exhibition) to accompany Dutch composer Richard Rijnvos’s new composition, Aphrodite for shō & string sextet (2022-23).
Mike Collier in collaboration with Tom Jordan, Memories of Sado Island Flora, 2026, Perspex and HDF, 80cm diameter
Mike Collier in collaboration with Tom Jordan and Geoff Sample, The Sound of a Mountain Stream Under a Clear Night Sky, from the suite Seeds to Stars, 2025, digital print on 300gsm acid free fine art paper, handmade circular frame, 50cm diameter
This is the fourth part of Kosmoscópio, a cycle in which each of the nine Musica Universalis components is depicted in a musical composition. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Harmony of the Spheres’, this ancient Greek philosophical abstraction contemplates the various proportions in the movements of celestial bodies. A special viewing of this work with Richard Rijnvos present for the event will precede the opening on the evening of Wednesday 4 March and run from 4.30pm.
Collier’s interest in the haiku of the Japanese master, Matsuo Basho, developed into a twenty-two-year relationship with colleagues in Japan. In July 2025, he undertook an artist residency on Sado Island (an island of the West Coast of Japan, in the Sea of Japan). He spent the majority of his time on the island in the isolated village of Kitaushima at the Northern tip of the Island. “One the wonderful experiences in Kitaushima”, says Collier, “was the nighttime Pacific Swift watch. I was fortunate to see hundreds of these graceful flyers who are on the wing at almost any hour, day or night, and produced a series of digital sketches called Swooping Swifts (2026), one of which (a metre-square print) is exhibited at Vane.”
Collier has included two circular Perspex collages in the exhibition. In the first, The Tree of Life (2025), he draws on Persian mythology where the Tree of Life is a sacred symbol and represents the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. The second, Memories of Sado Island Flora (2026), is a celebration of the joy the artist experienced on cloudless days and balmy nights when encountering the richness and diversity of flora on Sado Island in Japan during his 2025 visit.
Mike Collier in collaboration with Tom Jordan and Geoff Sample, The Valley of Wonderment (Golden Oriel), from The Canticle of the Birds Suite, 2026, digital print on 300gsm acid free fine art paper, handmade circular frame, 100cm diameter
Mike Collier, Redstart, Oak, from the series Seeds of Trees; Sounds of Mountains, 2025, digital print on 300gsm acid free fine art paper, handmade circular frame, 50cm diameter
Throughout his time in Kitaushima, Collier was able to visit an empty ryokan (inn) at different times of the day (early morning/midday/sunset/late evening). Here, the light fell directly onto the wooden floors and paper/fabric/wood walls, and his new painting in this show, Ryokan Shadows, Sado (2026), traces the ghosts and shadows of former occupants and travellers in the ryokan.
Two more of the large metre-square prints, The Valley of Love; the Nightingale (2026), and The Valley of Wonderment; the Golden Oriel (2026), were inspired by the Persian poem of 1177, ‘The Canticle of the Birds’. Written by the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, it imagined a quest undertaken by a group of birds through seven valleys, led by a Hoopoe to find the Simurgh. However, unlike in the original, this contemporary journey involves a group of different traveller-birds from around Europe, and like the birds, it crosses cultural boundaries. This work was originally commissioned by the Aga Khan Centre Gallery in December 2025 and involved a close collaboration with Geoff Sample and Tom Jordan.
Finally, four small square Perspex pieces made for the exhibition at Vane present the song of four local birds (Song Thrush, Great Tit, Spotted Fly Catcher, and Dunnock). The graphic line in this work developed from Geoff Sample’s sonograms of each bird’s song and celebrate ‘Moments of Wonder’ in our world.
Mike Collier is Emeritus Professor of Art and Ecology at the University of Sunderland and is a writer, curator and artist. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, before being appointed Gallery Manager at the ICA in London. He subsequently became a Curator and later a Lecturer/Professor of Art and Design, working extensively in the UK and abroad. Throughout his career, he has maintained his artistic practice. Much of his work is place-specific and explores our relationship to a ‘more than human’ world, paying close attention to specific environments he engages with. He has shown in the UK and abroad and his work is in a number of public and private collections. He has long been interested in Japanese culture and first visited Japan in 2004 having returned half a dozen times since then. His studio is based in Cobalt Studios, Newcastle upon Tyne, of which he is also a Director.
Grateful thanks to: Geoff Sample; Tom Jordan; Nora Nadvegi; Esen Kaya (Gallery Curator, Aga Khan Centre Gallery, London); Professor John Williams (Sophia University, Tokyo); the Daiwa Foundation; Rebecca Morrill; Professor Richard Rijnvos; Northern CNC; Rachael Clewlow; James Daltry, Bruce Reid, and Tim Collier.
Mike Collier’s studio
Artist’s talk: Mike Collier in conversation with Rebecca Morrill
Saturday 21 March 5.30-7pm
Mike Collier talks about his work with Rebecca Morrill, Gateshead-based writer, editor and former curator. Since 2023, Morrill has been Executive Commissioning Editor at HENI Publishing, and previously held roles at Phaidon Press, Contemporary Art Society, AV Festival, Serpentine Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery. Admission to the talk is free but booking is required.
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