Title

The silver light.

Venues

Megalo Print Studio + Gallery [Watson]. (11 July 2008 – 9 August 2008)

Date

(2008)

Summary

Multi-artist exhibition. Located: Austtralia (ACT). Prints

Curator

Julian Laffan

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

An exhibition exploring the influence of photography on contemporary non-photographic art practice, in association with VIVID, the National Festival of Photography

How has photography influenced the art practice of artists who are not photographers? Curated by Julian Laffan for the VIVID National Photography Festival, The Silver Light explores the impact of photography on contemporary art practice as well as our everyday consumption of photographic imagery via television, advertising, printmedia and the internet. The exhibition presents new work by seven emerging artists who make reference to the photographic image using hand rendered processes or non-photographic media.

Using media such as glass, relief print, drawing, painting and sculpture, the artists examine the role of photography as both an artistic influence and as a means of communication. The artists, Alexander Boynes, April Surgent, Surya Bajracharya, Julian Laffan, Rose Montebello, Roh Singh and Kate Stevens, make use of photography as a starting point for their art-making, interpreting or critiquing the role of the photographer’s lens by translating their imagery into non-photographic media.

Julian Laffan's woodcut The Silver Light, 2008, from which the exhibition has taken its title, is a portrait of a cinematographer, reflected around a central axis and printed on reflective silver card. Initially it is the subject matter of the print which appears to be the connection with photography. A second work by Laffan, titled Still Running, refers directly to Eadward Muybridge’s famous photographic sequence The Horse in Motion. Both Still Running and The Silver Light make use of the play of negative and positive image to refer to the complex and dynamic relationship between ancient and contemporary art-making technologies, and between hand-rendered and photographically ‘captured’ truths. [Gallery media, 2008]