Light Geist presents three new commissions by artists working with video projection. Through immersive animation, data mapping and tanks of swirling mist, the viewer is plunged into a world of ghosts, memory, mysterious illuminations and blazing landscapes.
First-time collaborators, media artist Sohan Ariel Hayes (WA) and senior Martu artist Ngamaru Bidu (WA) to animate Bidu’s paintings of Western Desert country. Bidu’s work frequently depicts the Martu’s controlled burning of the land, taking an aerial view to produce mesmerising canvases awash in flame. Here they will be transformed into a three-dimensional, immersive experience, projected onto the gallery’s floor and walls as viewers walk within an ever-moving fire.
Both Ella Barclay (NSW) and Sam Price (WA) explore the immaterial nature of thought and data in two very different works. Barclay’s installation sees tanks hung from the ceiling in a darkened gallery. In the tracks, swirling with mist, the bodies of swimmers can be made out rising through the surface. These spectral forms, strange ghosts, refer to the shifting nature of thought and memory. Price, on the other hand, moves inwards to the brain, mapping cerebral activity onto a three- dimensional re-creation of brain hemispheres.
Exhibition curator Erin Coates says that the projected light in Light Geist “does not rest lightly on a flat surface” but rather “enlivens architectural space, animates three-dimensional forms, and even makes the ground beneath us seethe”. Engaging and distorting the viewer’s sense of space and place, this exhibition promises a powerfully immersive experience.
Light Geist
Fremantle Arts Centre
19 November – 22 January
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