Image: Jacky Redgate, Light Throw (Mirrors) Fold - Yellow and White, 2018, chromogenic photograph handprinted, 185 x 127 cm.
ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present Light Throw (Mirrors) Fold /Unfold, a new exhibition by one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists, Jacky Redgate.
For more than two decades Jacky Redgate has worked with mirrors and objects in her studio, exploring abstraction, light, space and reflection with remarkable photographic and sculptural outcomes. Perceptual systems such as linear perspective and Cartesian geometry and optics, which structures two-dimensional space into a simulation of the three-dimensional world, are a frequent motif in Redgate’s work.
In this exhibition Redgate extends her acclaimed and ongoing studio photographic series, Light Throw (Mirrors) commencing in 2009, with fresh experiments and revelations. Whereas the irony of her earlier Light Throw (Mirrors) works (2009 –) was that there are no mirrors in the photograph – we only see their projected light and objects floating on surfaces – commencing in 2013 the artist elaborates the studio set-up by physically folding the prop that she rebounds light onto, later placing mirrors on its folding surface. Then in Unfold 2016, Redgate attempted to escape the visual vortex of her screen, breaking the symmetry of the fold and discarding the mirrors. In this new series Redgate returns to the fold and mirrors, systematically rotating different primary coloured panels that mix colour across either side of the fold, as well as recycling the mirrors that rebound light from a battery of multiple flashes. The viewer is confronted by a flattening of space and a shimmering optical effect from the material construction.
Jacky Redgate, Light Throw (Mirrors) Fold - Blue and Black, 2017, chromogenic photograph handprinted, 185 x 127 cm.
In all of Redgate’s iterations of her mirror works dating back to STRAIGHTCUT (2001–) she uses the 4 x 5-inch camera in a fixed position and she regularly describes herself as an ‘absent/presence’ in the work. Curator, Robert Leonard has recently observed that her mirror works – “... deranges the reciprocity between seer (photographer/viewer) and seen. Despite all those mirrors, neither photographer nor camera are visible. Standing in Redgate’s place, we might feel that the image isn’t returning our gaze, but that it looks past us, looks awry. She/we aren’t the projected centre of the world’. [1]
Jacky Redgate is regarded as one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, with a practice extending four decades. Redgate’s career began in the context of late 1970s feminism, minimalism and conceptual art. She is known for her photographic and sculptural work using systems and logic. Working across photographic and object-based practices, Redgate has exhibited extensively within Australia and internationally since the end of the 1970s. Recent selected solo exhibitions include: WORK-TO-RULE (NEGATIVE), Kronenberg Wright Gallery, Sydney, 2018, Jacky Redgate Light Throw (Mirrors) #1-10, 2018, Latrobe Regional Gallery; Jacky Redgate: Mirrors, University Art Gallery, the University of Sydney (2015); Jacky Redgate: the Logic of Vision, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2012); Visions From Her Bed, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2008); Jacky Redgate: Life of the System 1980–2005, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2005–06); and Jacky Redgate: Survey 1980–2003, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide (2004). She is a recipient of the 1st prize, Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne (2011). Her work is included in major national collections and survey exhibitions including two Australian Perspecta exhibitions, three Biennales of Sydney, the Clemenger Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria (2006), and the Heide Museum of Modern Art’s Cubism & Australian Art (2009).
[1] Robert Leonard in Ann Stephen and Robert Leonard, Jacky Redgate: Mirrors, University of Sydney, Power Publications, p.83. This 2016 publication is an important new monograph which focuses on Redgate’s eminent work with mirrors in recent decades co-published by Power Publications with the University Art Gallery, The University of Sydney, in partnership with the University of Wollongong.