With intricate illuminated structures, glowing vats of mist and fiery landscapes, ‘Light Geist’ celebrates the enveloping and entrancing power of video projection. Featuring new commissions by four leading Australian artists, the exhibition challenges the notion that video projection is a flat cinematic tool, showcasing the potential interplay between surface and projected image.
Award-winning media artist Sohan Ariel Hayes (WA) and senior Martu artist Ngamaru Bidu (WA) will transform Bidu’s mesmerising paintings of the Martu’s fire burning regimes in the Western Desert into an absorbing three-dimensional painting. Consuming the floor and walls of FAC’s Main Gallery, Bidu’s animated country will engulf viewers, moving and blazing around them.
In FAC’s darkened hallway, leading contemporary artist Ella Barclay (NSW) will project onto vapour rising from suspended drums. These mysterious, ghostly works speak of spectral encounters and point to the ethereal nature of digital data and the alchemic transformation of ideas into matter.
Perth-based musician and artist Sam Price, otherwise known as NAIK, will use projection to map an intricate and pulsing environment onto a foam structure, filling Gallery 3. This glowing, digitised landscape is interrupted by data glitches and distortions as Price’s installation wrestles with notions of human perception and memory.
Curated by FAC Special Projects Coordinator Erin Coates.
Fremantle Arts Centre
Until 11 January, 2017
Western Australia
Ella Barclay, Ebb, 2012-13, looped video, acrylic tank, water, mist, copper, electronics, 240 x 80 x 20cm
Photograph: Jamie North
