By the Reflection of Light 2020
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/// TAKEN IN A FEW SECONDS /// BY THE REFLECTION OF LIGHT
A commission by the Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library, Preston
/// TAKEN IN A FEW SECONDS
Is an array of rare books and photographs from the stores of The Harris, gathered in a cabinet of mirror and coloured glass. Here is a tiny mirror-like photograph, called a Daguerreotype, taken 175 years ago. Beside it are facsimiles of ancient Egyptian papyri in two enormous books. Here is ‘Opticks’ by the philosopher Newton, and the score of an opera by Purcell from 1691. All the objects have been altered in their transit through time. In the cabinet, these disparate time-travelers are brought into a conversation with each other and with the present.
/// BY THE REFLECTION OF LIGHT
Is a moving image work, whose subject is the nature of reality and how perception is inflected by photography. Intimately close, we see the objects from the cabinet in a network of connected imagery. They are dialogue with each other and with the artist as she travels through The Harris Museum and the River Ribble. The books from the Harris collection discuss the rites of the dead, contemporary disappearance within the digital, the absence at the center of the museum and the fugitive rainbow-like state of being alive.