Painting with Light

About

The exhibition reveals how much is shared across disciplines through their dual photographic and painterly qualities such as framing, optical distortion, fragmentation, interplay of light and contrast, the flattening of the image as well as the use of high and low angles.

Presenting 11 contemporary artists (Faith Childs Davis, Simone Kennedy Doig, Melanie Issaka, Chantal Joffe, Sahara Longe, Pat O’Connor, Graham Silveria Martin, Dafna Talmor, Caroline Walker, James Wilde and Isabelle Young) and comprising 18 works, Painting with Light addresses how photographs have been employed as source material for paintings yet have not always received equal presence. For many artists, the sharing of source photographs is rightfully irrelevant; however, with some there is a more open dialogue. As highlighted by Arthur Goldsmith in his 1972 book The Camera and Its Image, “[I]n its relationship to painting's flight from realism, photography was a catalyst and an accomplice, rather than the villain … By the time photography entered its modern period, toward the century's end, all parties concerned were inextricably indebted to each other, a fact that few of either viewpoint were willing to admit”.

Curator Isabelle Young adds:

The invention of photography allowed painters to see and notice the everyday in a new and casual manner. Without the camera the “snapshot” style and cropped figures rolling over the edge of the canvas may not exist in painting. Conversely, photographs have been wrongly perceived as truth however they are often, and equally, creations of the mind. The intention is not to compare what happens between the painter’s mixing of pigment with linseed oil and the photographer’s exposure of the negative to light, but to explore an often-shared vision and approach to image making. Each artist either borrows from, references, or views their practice through the spectrum of one another.

This exhibition seeks to close divisions and redress historical imbalances between the mediums which have existed since the invention of the fixed photographic print threw painting into crisis. Both in person and virtually, the show moves seamlessly between photography and painting to highlight their shared physical presence and reveal how much each exists in relation to the other.

The physical exhibition at 79 Wardour Street has now ended. You can experience its extended version on vortic.art until 4th December 2023.