Light Out of Darkness

An exhibition exploring Photography’s foundation in darkness, mystery and melancholia. Susan Fereday presents three new works – Wail (2007), Grail (2008), Black Sun (2009) – inspired by research into the historical photographs of Nicéphore Niépce and Henry Talbot.

In these installations, papier maché balls and glass goblets are suspended from the ceiling, lit with spotlights and video projections to cast evanescent refractions and shadows around the darkened room. By this means, Fereday invokes the logic of Photography without the use of actual photographic prints. Where Photography transposes its subject from the realm of objects into the realm of pictures, Fereday reverses the process, so that ‘the photographic’ is returned to the three-dimensional world of transitory, lived experience.

Photography’s paradoxical nature is brought to the fore; the ‘language of light’ is constructed from darkness, to conceal more than it reveals, to present illusion rather than truth.

Date: 10 - 18 December
Time: 10am - 5pm
Opening: Wednesday 16 December 2009, 5 - 7 pm
Location: Faculty Gallery, Art & Design Building
Enquiries: Jill Winfield
Email: Jill.Winfield@artdes.monash.edu.au
Phone: 9903 2882

Susan Fereday, Grail, Installation of glass goblets and light, 1350 x 2000 x 80 mm, 2008. Courtesy of the artist