Shadow Optics

"Images have become a new form of light.” Paul Virilio

Shadow Optics brings together four artists who deal in layers, atmospheres, and speculative or virtual spaces. Each has an interest in light - whether using reflective surfaces, photographic processes, backlit screens, or manipulating or fabricating lighting effects. Their work is characterised by slippages and uncertainty - inviting the viewer into the gap between a thing and its shadow, reflection, or representation.

Georgie Grace works with video, installation and text. Her work often questions or tests how our bodies are physically impacted by images, as well as how we struggle mentally to cope with the proliferation of both images and digitally mediated language. Her videos explore the edges of tolerance for flickering light and rapidly changing images or text, and enquire into themes of technological change and machine and human vision. 

Reece Jones makes drawings whose initial subject territories may be whimsical, improbable, impossible or theoretically muddled. Cross references, samples and complete fabrications are accumulated until an image is made manifest whose origins are potentially difficult to define. Process led, the works undergo rigorous, repeated application and removal. The results are atmospheric, and authoritative works, which belie their rudimentary material composition. Ultimately the viewer is invited to assess the legacy of surface, process, documentary, translation, actuality, illusion and doubt.

CJ Mahony’s practice considers stability, impermanence, architectural space and scale, often playing on the manipulation of light to explore psychological states of unrest. Her works allude to corridors, geometry, folds, support structures, and backstage spaces, and range from large scale, site responsive constructions through to fragile, speculative sculptures.  

Solveig Settemsdal works between drawing, sculpture and photography. She uses materials that are easily affected by their surroundings to engender sculpture with a certain liquidity; embodying a constant potential for transformation. Inorganic and biological substances are often pitted against each other to initiate a balance between conscious intention and unconscious material process.