Art Guide

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March/April 2010

A good ARI isn’t hard to find > NSW
Artist Run Initiative (ARI) Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 1: Paddington/Woollahra > NSW
The first week of Art Month Sydney kicks off across Paddington and Woollahra, collectively crowned ‘Precinct 1’ Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 2: Surry Hills/Darlinghurst > NSW
In reality Sydney’s gallery scene is a broad and vibrant kaleidoscope. Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 3: Waterloo > NSW
Precinct 3 takes in the suburb of Waterloo, home to the Danks Street Complex which includes ten of Sydney’s commercial galleries. Read More

Art Month Sydney > Precinct 4: Redfern/Chippendale/CBD > NSW
Serendipitously there are two galleries in Precinct 4 that showcase Asian art, Read More

Discipline ain’t what it used to be
Donald Judd, one of the more influential founding fathers of minimalism couldn’t hack New York’s claustrophobia. Read More

The legacy of two great artists > NSW
Two significant Indigenous exhibitions, staged as part of Art Month Sydney, are East Kimberley Painting Revisited at Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay and Museum III at Utopia Art. Read More

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Ecology of Compassion (SA)

By Stephanie Radok

Who hasn’t walked out of a cinema after seeing a movie and felt as if they are still in the film? Sitting in the dark in front of the illuminated screen you live within it and then internalise its movement and sound and seem to carry it along with you, for a short time anyway. The use that contemporary visual artists make of the moving image’s special capacities of scale, sound, time, dialogue, narrative, lyricism, mingling reality and unreality, is a frontier whose edge keeps moving with the development of new technologies and as artists approach more and more subtle concepts.
The interactive art made by Lynette Wallworth embraces and envelops us, it stands at the border between the moving image and actual life, and plays on the emotions of the viewer who doesn’t merely look at but actually experiences the work. The artist creates ecologies which embody our connection in both social and biological worlds as her works deal with important personal and global matters with a delicate sensibility. In Invisible By Night the viewer activates the work by reaching out to make contact with a grieving woman behind a glass wall covered with condensation. The touch of the viewer, their compassion or sympathy, causes the image to change so that the woman wipes the mist away to show her sorrowful face clearly, and apparently see the viewer before turning away.
Invisible By Night is the first in a trilogy of interactive works that courageously evoke huge spiritual truths like compassion, resilience and hope. It's currently being shown at the Samstag Museum with the third in the trilogy Duality of Light, along with a group of other significant and award-winning works including Hold: Vessel 1 and 2, Damavand Mountain and Beautiful Sunset. This is the largest group of her work ever shown in Australia and the first time so many of her works have been shown together anywhere. The elegant spaces of the Samstag Museum, Australia’s newest art museum, will be lit for almost two months by the colours and sounds of Wallworth’s transformative and exquisite work.

This is the debut showing of Duality of Light which was commissioned by the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund, the first time it has ever commissioned a visual artist to make a work. The biennial Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) now called BAFF, the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, has made a huge global mark through part-funding and commissioning films with its Investment Fund. Successful examples from the past include films such as Ten Canoes, Look Both Ways, Lucky Miles and The Home Song Stories. In commissioning an interactive artwork rather than a film the BAFF is demonstrating its embrace of the moving image in all forms and the
increasing experimentation, sophistication and ambition of cross-disciplinary work being made by contemporary visual artists. Lynette Wallworth is an internationally celebrated Australian artist whose work in film, photography and installation has blossomed into memorable interactive works. She has just been invited to be part of the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. Her first major European solo exhibition was presented by Peter Sellars’ NEW CROWNED HOPE Festival in Vienna in 2006 and in the last two years her work has been exhibited extensively both internationally and nationally. In order to be able to create her complex projects Wallworth works with Forma, one of Europe’s leading creative production agencies working with international artists to develop and deliver new projects often involving complex collaborations that cross artforms. For Duality of Light, Wallworth collaborated with Peter Brundle, who programmed the interactive elements of the work, and with British sound artist Chris Watson on the spatial sound element. The sound content is drawn from Watson’s extensive archive of recordings of locations and atmospheres.
The structure of Duality of Light is based on the Preah Khan temple in Cambodia, which leads visitors through four opposing entrances to an inner sanctuary. A creation of King Jayavarman VII in honor of his father, the Mahayana Buddhist temple and monastery of Preah Khan was dedicated in 1191 A.D. to Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. In her proposal the artist described Duality of Light as a journey, one which each viewer must make alone but which eventually leads to a sense of connection with others. In her words: At the beginning of the work you enter a cave-like portal. You carry a very small light to guide your way. The path is marked by seven sound thresholds which you pass through; a series of doorways which become larger the more you enter the interior. Each one strengthens the sensation of being immersed, but there is also a sensation of
ever-expanding space, as though the deeper you go, the greater the expanse ahead…

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum, Adelaide.
Lynette Wallworth: Duality of Light
A 2009 Adelaide Film Festival Commission
Until 24 April

Stephanie Radok is an artist, writer and editor based in Adelaide.