Light+Life Exhibition
National Gallery of Victoria’s Design Week 2020.
13 – 22 March 2020
Curator - Ilan El.
Artists - Ilan El, Mathew Woodgate, James Tapscott, Aly Indermuhle, Veronica Caven Aldous, Jasmine Targett, Danielle Storm, Marc Pascal.
Image - Jasmine Morgan Ryan, Cosmic Light: A Portal Opens, 2020 (Detail). Photograph component.
Of all environmental factors, light and colour are the ones with the swiftest and most significant impact on our wellbeing.
Light+Life features immersive light based installations, aiming to engage visitors in a multi sensory journey. A group of eight artists and designers, harnessing design capabilities to produce light based artworks, exploring how light affects us physically, mentally and emotionally Light+Life examines new ways of design thinking, employing the immaterial into shape and form, exploring paths to illuminate ideas. The show will display an array of works from meditative, through scientific to aesthetic, weaving light through narratives of life.
by Curator, Ilan El.
Work Presented -
Cosmic Light: A Portal Opens, 2020.
Hand Blown Glass, Epidiascope Projector, Radiant Perspex, Antique Telescope Lens and Photograph
Installation size - Dimensions vary
Cosmic Light: A Portal Opens is a spatial artwork that is presented in three parts - an image, installation and projected moving image. The work explores how the practice of stargazing opens up a portal in the mind that dissolves the boundary between nature and self. In this space the ancient celestial light of the cosmos expands consciousness, enhances wellness and gives a sense of greater connection to existence and the universe.
Mt Dandenong 37.8311° S, 145.3600° E
“Star gazing on Mount Dandenong another world opens up. Immersed in the forest the light pollution of the city fades and the Milky Way becomes visible. The longer I look, the more I can see. My awareness of self and other dissolves as I am absorbed by my surroundings. My mind is flooded with the light of a thousand stars spilled across the sky. The deeper into nature I look the more it reveals. My mind’s eye tries to focus and make sense of other worlds becoming visible. A portal into another world both inside and outside of myself opens and reality expands.”
The installation presented in three parts is triggered by the artist’s practice of Shinrin- Yoku, the Art and Science of Forest Bathing on Mount Dandenong. The celestial image of the Milky Way photographed at 37.8311° S, 145.3600° E (Mt Dandenong) has been mirrored, mimicking the form the holographic Sphenoid bone present in the installation. Sitting in the centre of the brain, the Sphenoid bone is the most complex bone in the human body through which most of the major sensory nerves run. The juxta-positioning of images, objects, projected light, glass and telescope lenses abstractly describes the sensory processes of the mind’s eye of the artist during forest immersion, physically and psychologically simultaneously making sense of nature and existence.
This work was commissioned by Knox City Council and exhibited in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Design Week 2020.
