Artist Statement

ON A CLEAR DAY

This new series of work On a Clear Day continues my interest in light and colour. I began experimenting with light by projecting film onto a curtain in Nothing to see here (2020). Just Light (2021-22) allowed me to dispense with the subject all together and elevate the things that make a photograph a photograph, namely light and shadow, colour and time, to content in their own right.

Prior to this I spent 2013-2019 working with the camera obscura, one of the earliest forms of photography, dating from the Renaissance. The camera obscura is weather dependent and transient, contingent on the position of the sun in the sky. The experience and the image is created in real time, you cannot ‘fix’ an image, you can only experience it as it happens. You can however be in the room with a camera and capture the moment.

On a Clear Day is the outcome of my previous two series exploring light and colour fuelled by my knowledge of the camera obscura. Using four sculptural apertures opening to the sky and wrapping them with oversized photographic colour gels enabled me to create large minimal swathes of colour. The structural design of the openings creates form and dimension producing shadows and highlights which merge with the light and colour to create luminous spaces in which the light is palpable. I do not ‘make’ the images but rather decide when to press the shutter. It is a process of observation over the course of a day, as the sun moves across the sky the angle and intensity of the light changes creating transient images differing in shape and dimension. The images created in January will not be the images that appear in April.

Every image is a surprise and every image is unique. For that reason the date and time that each image was captured has become the title of the work. Weather, as well as creating the image also has an effect on the process itself, accidents happen, and the wind and rain over time can unexpectedly and positively influence the resulting image. Impossible to convey in full, the transient images in the series are at the limit of what they can depict. Utilising light, colour and form and subjecting them to natural processes of change creates a sense of endlessness in the work. The photographs in On a Clear Day signify the possible rather than the known.

Robyn Stacey
Monday 25 March 2024