Re-imagining Heide in her most ambitious exhibition, Sitelines: Natasha Johns-Messenger will comprise a number of architectural interventions that extend the principles of her installations on an unprecedented scale.
Best known for her large-scale, site-determined installations that examine spatial perception, phenomenology and light, Johns-Messenger’s work is a complex process of imitation, illusion and trickery activated by architectural interventions and optical physics, but also extending to photography, digital painting and sculpture.
Extending the experiments of James Turrell, Robert Irwin and other artists associated with the Light and Space movement of the 1960s, her work explores the interaction of space, light and volume, dissolving the relationship between the viewer and the work of art into a renewed shared space.
Johns-Messenger will create an experience of perceptual paradox within the Heide III galleries using a complex system of optical physics (comprising strategically placed material devices such as periscopic mirrors, live-video projections, architectural mimicry and cuts, and site-determined photography) that sets up disorienting pictorial planes in real space.
Curated by Linda Michael, Deputy Director of Heide Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition will comprise four room-sized installations and several site-specific structures, in addition to site photographs and film. Participant viewers, in many instances, will not know what is real and what is virtual in their immediate space or view.
“The rectilinear geometry of Heide III and its three large windows will provide an excellent site for Natasha’s sculptural frameworks and a unique opportunity for visitors to interact with Heide as a cognitive landscape as well as a physical historical site,” said curator, Linda Michael.
Sitelines: Natasha Johns-Messenger continues Heide’s series of survey exhibitions of significant living Australian artists (shows to date have included Rick Amor, Les Kossatz, Kathy Temin, Simryn Gill, Callum Morton, Gunter Christmann, Ken Whisson and Aleks Danko).
Sitelines: Natasha Johns-Messenger
Heide III: Central Galleries, 7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen
Exhibition: 25 June – 25 September 2016
Entry fees apply
For more information, visit: www.heide.com.au for details.
Image: Natasha Johns-Messenger, Alterview 2013 tinted glass, stainless steel 304 x 488 cm Hunters Point High School/ Intermediate School 404, New York Commissioned by Percent for Art, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, with SCA and Fxfowle architects