Jacky Redgate | Light Throw (Mirrors) Fold / Unfold
Abstracting light and reflection, Jacky Redgate plays with hand-printed analogue film to morph geometric abstraction with the genre of still life.
Following her Mirrors exhibition at the University Art Gallery of Sydney last year, Light Throw (Mirrors) Fold/Unfold is the next installment of her mirror-works project.
Redgate continues to push her practice, combining her studio still-life photography experiments with her long-standing interest in window display and product lighting. In her early works she explored the optical interplay of mirrors and everyday objects attached to a folding screen. Once lit up and displayed vertically on the screen, the striped plates, rulers and dominoes are dislocated from their original meaning or use, and morph into abstract forms and patterns.
In Unfold (2016), Redgate attempts to escape the visual vortex of her screen and mirrors, by displaying a doll, coasters, spoons, and a child’s sewing machine on pink velvet in the fold of her screen.
It has been 36 years since Redgate last played with dolls in her work. Is she giving the subject of her recent photograph Miss Pears’ Contest Photographs 1959 — herself at age 3 — toys to play with, or is something else afoot? This new work connects Redgate’s well-known interest in the mirror photographs of Florence Henri with her little known interest in American photographer Dare Wright, author of the 1957 children’s book The Lonely Doll.
Alongside the exhibition, the Power Publications monograph, Jacky Redgate: Mirrors was launched in Melbourne. It is a critical oeuvre of the intriguing progression of Redgate’s abstract and still-life practice.
EXHIBITION
Jacky Redgate | Light Throw (Mirrors) Fold / Unfold
21 June – 23 July
Arc One Gallery
Courtesy the artist and Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.
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