Light Source

QAGOMA Store Verified independent store

→

Phenomenological experience of expanded cinema meets the immersive possibilities of light projection. The utopian opportunities opened up by Len Lye’s visionary hand-painted films are taken up with gusto by a multi-generational pool of artists including Len Lye, Dirk de Bruyn, Mike Leggett, Joan Brassil, and Taree Mackenzie. This publication accompanies the exhibition Light Source, curated by Martyn Jolly and Tony Oates at the Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra. Together these artists celebrate the role of light, projection and performance in connection to the history and continuity of abstract and expanded cinema. Rather than concentrate on current technological developments or cultural contexts, the essays in this publication take varied approaches to the enduring allure of light and colour in both art and science over extensive timescales. In his essay Light source, Tony Oates discusses the artist’s contributing to the exhibition by drawing on the physics of light, the physiology of sight and the phenomenology of perception. Martyn Jolly’s text weaves together an Australian history with the ‘telescope’ of artificial light as its lens. And, as an artist and researcher, Deirdre Feeney addresses the work of scientists and artists who locate the creation of colour within perception itself. Show more