My catalogue essay for the exhibition Light Source, Drill Hall Gallery, curated by myself and Tony Oates, 22 August to 19 October 2025.
First paragraph:
Yes, yes, we all know about ‘Australian light’, it’s hard and it’s harsh. It makes us squint into the red distance, across a haze of heat, towards the horizon. It makes us shade our eyes, our noses crossed with Pink Zinke, as we look out beyond the breakers into the blue. That’s the natural light we all live in, and supposedly ‘deal with’ in our art. But what about artificial light in Australia, the light that isn’t the signature of our national identity, but which we have nonetheless generated here? The following survey is derived from the work of many historians. It has detected, scintillating far off in the deep historical distance, brief flashes of the creative production of synthetic light for its own sake. It turns out that a continuing engagement with the direct manufacture and manipulation of that purest of art materials — light itself — has been reflected and refracted, bouncing through different genres, medias and contexts, all the way down the long tube of Australian history
Martyn Jolly 