In a new exhibition at Melbourne’s Monash Gallery of Art – Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City – curator Melissa Miles has selected a diverse range of artists and images through which to explore what she terms “the myths that surround light in the history of Australian photography”.
Miles, who is an Associate Professor at Monash University, has come to this exhibition through her larger research project into Australian light and photography. In ‘Dreams and Imagination’ it is the urban space and how photographers have responded to the changing modernist city, which draws Miles’ focus.
In some photography circles the notion of ‘Australian light’ is almost revered. Our light is strong, clear, and vibrant allowing photographers to capture the rich colours of the red earth, the vivid blue skies and breathtaking vistas that are part of Australia’s cultural narrative. But in ‘Dreams and Imagination’ Miles is more interested in how “electric light, artificial illumination, star light, and other forms of light other than the sun” have been used by photographers to make social comment on the urban environment.
“What interests me is the cultural history of the idea of an Australian light rather than saying whether there is or not, although I do think it is brighter than in other parts of the world,” says Miles. “But the interesting question for me is why do we invest in it culturally and how has that investment changed over the years?”
The images in this exhibition, in part, map the shift from pictorialism in Australian photography to modernism and show how photographers of both approaches responded to the changes in our cities. Artists include Max Dupain, Mark Strizic, Olive Cotton, Arthur Dickinson, David Moore and Harold Cazneaux with works dating from 1920s through 1971. Many of these images are important documents in the visual history of Australia and it is rare to have the opportunity to inspect these treasures at leisure.
In this exhibition Miles says you can see how the use of sunlight has shifted “from a kind of utopian ideal as a force of energy, rebirth and renewal” to one where light is used as a social critique, as is evidenced in the work by Mark Strizic on the slums in inner city Melbourne in the 1960s.
How light is used to shape the visual narrative may be the premise for the exhibition, but Miles says, “I’m drawn to these pictures firstly because they are beautiful. Some are quite melancholic, some very vibrant and I love the different atmospheres that can be communicated through light and shade and mist. It’s extraordinary”.
EXHIBITION
Until 1st March, 2015
Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City
Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road
Wheelers Hill
Melbourne
Australia
