A Trick of the Light brings together a group of internationally recognised contemporary artists whose works cast shadows, conjure illusions and bring the inanimate to life. Referencing pre-cinematic techniques and Victorian optical entertainments, these artworks use the transformative power of light to alter perception and trick the eye.
The exhibition includes Mat Collishaw’s, The Centrifugal Soul*; a sculpture in the form of a Zoetrope which uses stroboscopic lighting to animate a display of 3D printed flowers and birds.
Also on display is Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s award winning work, The Masterpiece, where a delicately detailed silhouette of each artist in profile, emerges from a solid silver sculpture cast from an unexpected source.
These works are shown alongside other ‘shadow’ works by Helen Maurer and Brass Art; the latter of which have created a large-scale immersive and site specific installation that takes the form of a grand rotating shadow show.
Rachel Goodyear’s hand drawn stop-frame animation, Dancing Devils completes the exhibition. Reminiscent of magic lantern slides and early cinema, Goodyear’s sprite-like figures seem doomed to dance forever in a never-ending loop until, as with the rest of the works in exhibition, the lights go out and the apparitions disappear.
Providing historical context to some of the techniques and technologies represented in the exhibition, A Trick of the Light will be accompanied by items on loan from The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, at the University of Exeter. Here 19th Century Zoetrope, ombrascopes and hand-cut silhouettes, sit alongside books on Shadow Play and Victorian stage illusions. The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter is the leading moving image museum in the UK with over 80,000 artefacts on the long history of the moving images and its audiences from the seventeenth century to the present day.
* VISITOR WARNING: MATT COLLISHAW’S THE CENTRIFUGAL SOUL, CONTAINS A SEQUENCE/S OF FLASHING LIGHTS WHICH MAY AFFECT VISITORS WHO ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO PHOTOSENSITIVE EPILEPSY OR OTHER PHOTO-SENSITIVITIES.