Light Works from Tate’s Collection
ACMI, Federation Square Melbourne

Light Works from Tate’s Collection was shown at ACMI Federation Square, Melbourne, 16 June - !3 November 2022, in cooperation with Tate UK. More than 70 works were featured in this exclusive blockbuster exhibition, connected by their fascination with light as both material and subject.

The art was drawn from their prestigious collection and celebrates groundbreaking moments from over 200 years of art history, the exhibition highlights  artists who harnessed this elemental force through painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, installation and the moving image and illuminates centuries of artistic practice and uniquely placing film in a broader historical art context.

The exhibition includes  must-see historical paintings by iconic artists like the great Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers, as well as the atmospheric beauty and transient light effects captured by Impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.

These extraordinary paintings are juxtaposed against equally groundbreaking works from modern and contemporary artists: Olafur Eliasson’s crystalline sculpture Stardust Particle (2014), Yayoi Kusama’s kaleidoscopic The Passing Winter (2005), James Turrell’s immersive Raemar, Blue (1969), Tacita Dean’s 16mm film Disappearance at Sea (1996) and Liliane Lijn's moving sculpture Liquid Reflections (1968). Viewed collectively, these radiant works draw fascinating links across time, medium and style, projecting light onto the viewer’s body and absorbing them into visions of infinite lustre and luminosity.

Photos Mark Ashkanarsy

16 June – 13 November 2022