Emma Fielden’s pen and ink drawing ‘The Veil (after René Magritte’s The Lovers)’ consists of hundreds of thousands of tiny numerals, each drawn by hand. The numerals begin at the top left corner with a zero and a decimal, followed by around 800,000 more zeros, a single numeral 1, then more zeros. It is an infinitesimal number close to zero.

René Magritte’s painting ‘The Lovers’ depicts two veiled heads leaning toward each other, almost touching. Fielden’s drawing is the veil between the lovers. It is the intimate distance between two people – a space that is at once subatomic and infinite.

Australian poet Carol Jenkins says: ‘The Veil deals concisely with the antique problem of art: the depiction of space, and the tension that exists between figures in a scene by the simple reiteration of zeros and the finely calibrated distance between each zero. Where the work lifts is in the synergy of the zeros. They shimmer on the paper – and in this embodied moiré pulse that seems to make the work float off the page, a sleight of hand that creates an illusion of three dimensions." (Read Carol Jenkins’ full essay here).