Form Shadow Space: Insight from the artists
Form Shadow Space: Analogical Perceptual Artefacts, at Deakin Library’s Waterfront Gallery, is an exhibition exploring the realms of architectural influence on spatial perception. It combines the practice-based research of academics Professor Eleanor Suess and Dr Maycon Sedrez from Deakin’s School of Architecture and Built Environment. This exhibition presents a unique exploration of architectural representation, employing artistic techniques to delve into concepts of space, void, shadow, light, scale and time.
The exhibition is ‘…about how we might communicate and express and explore the things that go beyond perhaps the quite mechanistic ways of drawing and digital modelling that we have,’ Professor Eleanor Suess explains.
‘I think one of the things that we were very keen to do in this exhibition… [was] talking about issues of practice-based research, and as a methodology of creating knowledge and the ways in which we might share that knowledge, one of which is through [this] public exhibition,’ she continued.
Eleanor and Maycon, through their respective mediums, delve into the art space of architecture. In two-dimensional media, Maycon sketches architecture from memory using unconventional painting tools, exploring the creation of spaces and voids. Eleanor begins with three-dimensional artefacts and uses cyanotype printing to capture the shadows of object compositions, challenging conventional understandings of scale with architectural models. Together, their works engage viewers in a rich narrative of architectural representation and perception.
We ‘extended the studio into the art space, and also bring the art space into the studio. And, making this intersection is important for me as an architect to reflect on spaces,’ Maycon explains.
Maycon’s paintings use a material that absorbs 99% light, mimicking his own experience of seeing at night: ‘It’s very difficult for me to see shapes at night, if there’s no light, or no source of light.’
‘As you look [at] the work with different eyes, different angles, you will notice different things. There are many layers that only you can perceive,’ Maycon explains.
Head of Library Exhibitions and Public Programs for the library, Jackson Mann, states ‘We’re really excited that for this exhibition, it could be a platform to share practice-based research … that exists outside of some of the conventional or more dominant ways of disseminating information. It’s so exciting for us to be able to bring [the] two practices together in this exhibition.’
Form Shadow Space: Analogical Perceptual Artefacts is open to the public until May 17, 2024.
