Shadowplay

Shadows are shape-shifters: spaces beyond the light that can morph into a silhouette, a revelation, a spectre or a doubt. Charged with the power of suggestion and concealed intent, shadows play with mystery and the imagination. We regard them at different times with fascination, suspicion and often fear. Logical and uncanny, playful and terrifying, familiar and strange, they are the embodiment of our projected ambiguous feelings.

We are also literally and figuratively attached to shadows, even affectionate. Without one of our own, as myth would have it, our soul could be lost. Furthermore, the shadow has become fabled as the progenitor of representation in art, since a maid in ancient Corinth, according to Pliny the Elder, traced her lover’s shadow on a wall to capture his image. By the sixteenth century, and most notably at the hand of Caravaggio, shadows had congregated in strong chiaroscuro that cast psychological tension into the narrative and pushed the theatrical appeal of art to new heights.

Light and its partnered dark are at the heart of Shadowplay, with shadows ranging from their hungry gathering in the sonorous melancholy of Bill Henson’s photographs; to their trills of liberation (from human bodies) as they scale Jess MacNeil’s Opera House steps, or their irresolution in the gloaming as they accompany the gentle passage of her boats on the river Ganges. Th e solitary shadow – used with black humour in the paintings of Dallas Bray – concentrates the meditative installations of Robert Owen and the more autobiographical work of Hossein Valamanesh. Darren Siwes and Niomi Sands look to the place metaphorically where light does not fall, evoking shades of personal history. Daniel Crooks locks light, shadow and the promise of irrevocable change into a spellbinding visual contract.

 

 

Image above: Daniel Crooks, Imaginary Object #1, 2006. Lambda print, framed, 61 x 51 cm

Image below: Robert Owen, Hammer on rock (a small spectacle) 1982. courtesy the artist

 

 

When

Location

Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, 1A First Street, Booragul 2284  View in Google Maps