Light Shift, Still Light
Natalie Hunter
Light Shift
Still Light
2021
Archival pigment prints on silk, turned aluminum, birch, light.
34" x 80" each print. 48" x 10" x 24", 48" x 10" x 36", 48" x 10" x 48" each sculpture.
Still Light and Light Shift continue my interest and research in time, memory, and the senses through the use of light as a material in image making and sculpture. In this pair of photo-based floor sculptures I make silk photographs by passing handmade colour filters over the aperture of the camera. Each exposure reflects, bends, and activates light entering the camera; producing subtle shifts in colour, traces of motion, and distortion. The resulting images are soft, imperfect, experimental, and ethereal multiple exposures that contain imagery of the spaces I encounter on a daily basis. Printed on silk, the photographs are draped in undulating waves, cascading drapes and folds over hand-made armatures. The silk photographs resemble the slippery space of thought and memory rather than a static recorded moment. They mimic the translucency of skin or bedding, and take on the shapes and forms of the armatures beneath. Subtle shifts in air movement allows the silk to billow. And exposure to natural and artificial lighting illuminates the underside of each image; making them appear as a translucent mirror images. The photo-based installations in Still Light and Light Shift resemble windows, doors, or architectural spaces that can be experienced in the round. Producing physical encounters that speak to the slowness of time and our luminous and transient relationships with light, memory, and the physical senses of touch we experience in the spaces we create for ourselves.
Natalie Hunter wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts in producing this body of work.