The work lights up when you walk in the room! Sonia Donellan’s show, Small Findings, is featured at the tiny Five Walls Gallery in Barkly Street, Footscray.
Donellan is a conceptual artist originally from South Australia. In this exhibition, her installation practice uses everyday ephemera to explore questions of uncertainty and the ‘emergent potentials and possibilities present in the moment’. The show involves two installations that explore the way in which emotional effects can manifest a work of art and create uncertainty.
The first piece is called ‘Marvelously Intimate’. It is constructed of sticky tape and gold leaf. The piece is a conceptual work, ephemeral in nature, metaphorical in character.
But for the corners, most of the work sticks to the wall. The piece is lit from above. The effect creates shadows that play with the boundaries of the piece. The interaction between light and shadow creates textures and a trompe l’oeil effect that tricks the eye into seeing a larger work than what is presented.
This effect indicates the nature of the relationship of the work to light and indeed of relationships in general. At first, it asks the viewer to consider its merit as art. As the question is deliberated, this delicate piece reveals itself through contemplation and gently prods the viewer towards the revelation that the relationships between light and materials, viewer and work are more than the sum of its parts.
Small findings is the main piece Donellan has chosen to exhibit. The work is ‘constructed from fluorescent lights mounted onto a wooden frame with a sensor that turns on at the approach of the viewer’. The viewer is literally given the power to turn the piece on and off. By the action of approach, the work reveals its luminosity. The lights shine in various shades of white, from cold white to blue. It is a meditative piece hanging in stillness on the wall like an incandescent painting lighting the space and bathing the viewer in light. It slips back into darkness as the viewer leaves the space.
Both works pause the viewer in the moment; one, in contemplation of a question, the other, with attraction to the light. In this space, the artist and her work challenge the viewer to be thoughtful and quiet and to reflect on the possibilities that the work conveys. The two works clearly capture the intention of Donellan’s brief.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Small Findings
An Exhibition by Sonia Donellan
Five Walls Gallery, Barkly St, Footscray
www.fivewalls.com.au
Until 29 March
