Birgit Jürgenssen: Nocturnal Light

About

Whereas Jürgenssen's 2013 solo show at the gallery focused on works from the 1970s, the current exhibition presents later work, made between 1987 - 1996. Jürgenssen (b.1949, Vienna), who died in 2003 aged 54, left several decades of work from performative photography to painting, drawing, and sculpture.

The title Nocturnal Light is taken from one of the largest works in the show, made in 1987, a mixed media on linen triptych which depicts three sources of nocturnal light: angel, moon and torch. Another painting, Double-Moon from the same year continues this narrative and explores the symmetry between day and night, light and shadow or reality and fantasy. This work is from a series originally exhibited in Jürgenssen's only UK museum solo exhibition Nekyia. Night See Ride. Night Lake Crossing, curated by Julien Robson first shown at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (1987). In the same year the exhibition also travelled to IKON Gallery, Birmingham and the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol.
 

The main focus of this show is on Jürgenssen's experimental photographic work from her fabric series. These consist of photographic prints mounted on canvas, which are screwed to iron frames that Jürgenssen constructed herself. Thin, translucent fabrics are stretched over the surface, veiling and slightly obscuring the images. The photographs themselves are created through a range of processes, including photograms, solarisation, and multiple-exposures. In some of the works, Jürgenssen employs cyanotype, a contact printing technique which creates a blue tint that reduces her figures and objects to silhouettes and dreamlike forms.