B.

Andrew Drummond’s kinetic (moving) sculptures are art machines. They operate at the point where science and beauty meet, and often begin with ideas or materials found in nature. This work explores how light behaves when it meets a moving object, like sunlight hitting a breaking wave, or dappling the ground underneath a leafy tree.Powered by an internal motor, the sections of the long brass cylinder slowly open and close. When light hits their curved surfaces it bounces off in all directions, while small holes allow it through onto the wall behind, creating a changing, immersive environment of shadow and light.

(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)

Bill Culbert’s high school art teacher asked his students to stand in a dark room, then went outside. The sunlight streamed through the keyhole, projecting a tiny image of him – upside down and waving – on the room’s far wall. From that moment, Culbert was excited by light’s power to transform how we see the world. These sculptures were some of the first he made exploring the possibilities of electric light. In Celeste, he placed a lightbulb into a dark box full of tiny holes, then put that inside a bigger Perspex box so that it generates multiple ‘ghost’ bulbs on the outside. Reflection 1 tests the line between reality and illusion, as another bulb repeats itself into infinity. Culbert liked ordinary, everyday materials best, believing they left more room for the imagination.

(Wheriko - Brilliant! 17 May 2019 – 16 February 2020)