Today we saw a show that was either one of the best shows we’ve ever seen or perhaps one of the most insane. At UTS Gallery right now (until November 5) is an exhibition called Written With Darkness curated by the academic, writer and filmmaker Ross Gibson. This is how the gallery flyer explains the show:
“It’s almost a cliché nowadays to point out that the word ‘photography’ literally means ‘light-writing’. But what if we turned that notion inside out and concentrated on how important the darkness is in many pictures? And what if we took this idea to the installation of such an exhibition too? In a gallery filled with carefully designed shadowing and glimmering, we would encounter pictures dependent on the absence of light …a kind of deliberate, artful unphotography. When inspecting a large collection of Australian photography currently lent to UTS by art patron Pat Corrigan, guest curator Ross Gibson noticed how many of the photographs were ‘written with darkness’. How intriguing, he thought, to embrace this visible thickness, to treat darkness as the theme and the defining medium of an exhibition.”
The show is crammed with a fantastic array of pictures ranging from obvious choices like Bill Henson (represented by 12 works) and Patricia Piccinini (that girl with the mouse with the human ear, except without the mouse) to eccentric but brilliant inclusions like Mervyn Bishop (a shot of Gogh Whitlam at night with Vincent Lingiari), Robert McFarlane (pic of Robyn Archer), Geoff Kleem (two sculptures on wheels), Mark Kimber (weird mannequin and skateboard), Matthew Sleeth (nighttime shots of buildings in China) and Robyn Stacey (the Bladerunner-esque Ice from the Redline 7000 series).
Corrigan’s collection is wide, comprehensive and amazing, displaying a real connoisseur’s eye. Every room in this show is a surprise, each holding familiar images and unfamiliar works from the same series of well known pics – there’s some Bill Hensons’s here that are instantly recognisable as key works, but also some of his lesser known moody skyscapes. Our hats go off to Gibson for selecting such a stunning array of work.
So what’s so insane about all that? We were checking out a work by Callum Morton (New Cannan, Connecticut) and we thought, they really should put some more light on that, you can hardly see it! We walked into the next room and were blown away by some Sleeth pictures when suddenly the lights went out. (We should also mention that the gallery has set up some speakers in the gallery playing tinkly avant garde piano music.) It was only then did we realise that the show has been set up as a kind of art work in itself, and our first thought wasn’t “how clever!” but more “you’ve got to be fucking kidding!”. Lights go on, lights go off. Pictures in darkness, pictures in light, and they change so quickly you have to really be fast to figure out what you’re looking at from the map-like catalogue.
Is this a good idea? Well, we got the idea instantaneously, no problem, but as much as we admire Gibson for his pioneering work in the field of ficto-criticism, we feel we must put our feet down and say enough is enough. This is insane.
