Works focusing on light and darkness, and how light creates and reveals our world, from one of Australia’s pre-eminent corporate art collections compiled by Wesfarmers over the past 30 years, will be exhibited at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne.
The exhibition, Luminous World: Contemporary art from the Wesfarmers Collection presents a diverse selection of contemporary paintings, photography and works of sculpture. The works traverse a diversity of cultural, aesthetic and philosophical perspectives, with the curatorial premise of how contemporary artists explore the phenomenon of light in their work.
Some 50 artists from Australia and New Zealand are featured in the exhibition including: Susan Norrie, Rosemary Laing, Howard Taylor, Dale Frank, Paddy Bedford, Bill Henson, Fiona Pardington (NZ), Brian Blanchflower, Brook Andrew, Timothy Cook and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.
Included alongside the art is a major new body of poetry by John Kinsella, written in response to works in the exhibition. These are published for the first time under the imprint of Fremantle Press in the book Luminous World, with new writing by artist Bill Henson and composer Richard Mills.
“Luminous World highlights the strengths of the Wesfarmers Collection, which has generously been shared, through the tour of the exhibition, with the wider community,” says Ian Potter Museum of Art Director, Ms Kelly Gellatly.
“In bringing together works across a range of media by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, Luminous World successfully showcases both the depth and continuing resonance of contemporary Australian practice in a rich, open-ended and exploratory conversation about light.”
“To know and experience light and its effects however, one must equally understand its other – darkness. Together, these concerns create an exhibition experience that is at once intellectual, emotional and experiential.”
The Wesfarmers Collection was started in 1977, and is housed in the Wesfarmers offices around Australia and shared with the community through a loan and exhibition program.
Luminous World: Contemporary art from the Wesfarmers Collection
The Ian Potter Museum of Art – The University of Melbourne, Swanston Street, Parkville (Melbourne)
Exhibition continues to 5 July 2015
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au for details.
Image: Brook Andrew, Replicant series: Owl 2005. Ilfochrome print, 130 x 195 cm, © Brook Andrew, reproduced courtesy of the artist and Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art