Installation and Sculpture > Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light

“Time has to split at the same time as it sets itself out or unrolls itself: it splits into two dissymmetrical jets, one of which makes all the present pass on, while the other preserves all the past. Time consists of this split, and it is this, it is time, that we see in the crystal.” (1)

Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light was commissioned for the windows above the East Campus Hall (ECH) entrance to UWAG. Photographing the architecture and landscaping around ECH using 120mm film, Hunter processed a set of three photographic transparencies that she describes as “slow cinema”. Over the course of the day the passage of light activates the saturated colours of the transparencies, casting ephemeral coloured shadows onto the walls and floor of the long corridor adjacent to the gallery. This effect subtly animates a space that students, staff, and visitors routinely walk through. Depending on the time of day, the angle of the sun and seasonal conditions, the visual effect changes. At night, the work is illuminated from within creating a glowing image visible from the street. Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light responds to the site by softening this otherwise hard architectural interior, inviting viewers to pause and reflect on an unremarkable institutional space that they might otherwise heedlessly pass through.

Natalie Hunter is from Hamilton, Ontario and completed her MFA at the University of Waterloo. Working between photography, installation, and moving image, she is known for her multilayered photo-based installations featuring colour imagery on transparent film. She has shown her work across Canada and has had recent exhibitions at The Reach Gallery Museum, Hamilton Winterfest, University of Manitoba School of Arts Gallery, Latcham Art Centre, Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Practice, and Rodman Hall Arts Centre. She is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and is a sessional instructor in Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo.

Akimbo: José Luis Torres, Sharl G. Smith, Natalie Hunter at University of Waterloo Art Gallery

Natalie Hunter's Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light at UWAG


1. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1989. 81.