Frequency Illusion

FREQUENCY ILLUSION

Preview Event November 6th 6-9pm

Exhibition continues November 7th - December 5th 2026

Once something enters our awareness, it can seem to appear everywhere. Known as a frequency illusion or the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, this perceptual bias describes our tendency to recognise recurring details with increasing regularity, as though the world were revealing a pattern previously concealed. In Frequency Illusion, David Micheaud considers the relationship between attention, coincidence and the human impulse to construct meaning from seemingly unrelated encounters.

Revisiting his photographic archive following his previous exhibition, Unhomely, Micheaud identifies a recurring motif spanning twenty-three years: the sphere. From discarded plastic balls and domestic light fixtures to tethered balloons, buoys and architectural forms, these incidental observations had quietly punctuated his life. Reassembled through a new series of works in pastel, they begin to suggest an alternative autobiography, one shaped less by chronology than by the persistence of a single form.

Both elementary and universal, the sphere collapses distinctions between the mundane and the cosmic. From celestial bodies shaped by gravity to the smallest objects of everyday life, its recurring geometry suggests an underlying relationship between matter, form and the invisible forces that govern our existence. Yet its apparent simplicity conceals a paradox: to draw a perfect circle might be considered the mark of a master, while its relentless pursuit might equally drive one mad. In Micheaud's work, the sphere becomes both a symbol of order and an object of fixation, capable of suggesting play, perfection and possibility as readily as surveillance, containment or threat.

Historically understood as a quirk of human perception, the frequency illusion acquires a different significance in an age of algorithmic mediation. Digital platforms observe our behaviour, anticipate our interests and return familiar images to us through cycles of recommendation and repetition. What was once a pattern we believed ourselves to have discovered may now be one actively reinforced by the systems surrounding us. The sphere itself possesses an almost memetic quality, migrating between contexts and accumulating new associations with each encounter. 

One work returns to the Bournemouth Eye, a tethered helium balloon Micheaud operated during his student years. Having declined an offer of permanent employment, he later reflected on how accepting might have redirected the course of his life entirely. The balloon becomes an unlikely monument to contingency, an anchor to an alternative history that never materialised. Elsewhere, a still from the 1960s television series The Prisoner depicts the ominous white sphere known as Rover, an apparently innocuous inflatable object transformed into an instrument of surveillance and control. In each instance, familiar forms become vessels for associations that extend far beyond their physical properties.

Marking a departure from his established painting practice, Micheaud's exploration of pastel offers a reconsideration of both his archive and the process of image-making itself. Through precise compositions, controlled light and subtle shifts in scale, ordinary objects acquire an enigmatic presence, suspended between documentation and invention. What begins as an exercise in formal repetition gradually unfolds into a meditation on memory, perception and the retrospective construction of personal history.

Frequency Illusion ultimately considers our desire to locate coherence within the incidental. Events and objects once regarded as insignificant acquire new meaning when viewed through the accumulated experience of a lifetime. Whether these repetitions reveal an underlying order or merely reflect our need to imagine one remains unresolved. In Micheaud's work, the familiar becomes a site of uncertainty, where the boundary between coincidence and significance is continually renegotiated.