2010 - Mirror Mirror: Then and Now
Mirror Mirror: Then and Now / 14 May – 16 July 2010
Image: Mikala Dwyer, IOU, 2009, mirror acrylic, 80 x 180 x 30 cm. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Mick Bradley.
In the 1960s, mirrors began to be used by artists across a spectrum of international movements including pop, kinetic, minimal and conceptual art. Mirror surfaces reflect both the environment and the viewer, 'like a visual pun on representation', as Ian Burn observed. Not just a looking glass, mirrors index the instability of perception, while inviting a viewer to participate in the purported endgame of late modernism.
Mirror Mirror, curated by Dr Ann Stephen, presents classic mirror pieces from the 1960s and early 1970s by major artists Robert Smithson, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Art & Language, Ian Burn, Joan Jonas, Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Richard Hamilton and Shusaku Arakawa. Alongside them are works by contemporary Australian artists – Robyn Backen, Christian Capurro, Peter Cripps, Mikala Dwyer, Alex Gawronski, Callum Morton, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Jacky Redgate and Robert Pulie – that make all kinds of interconnections and reverberations with the art of the 1960s.
Mirror Mirror: Then and Now exhibition (YouTube video)
Image: Mirror Mirror: Then and Now, 2010, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photogprahy by Mick Bradley.
Image: Christian Capurro, White Breath (Passenger), 2009, correction fluid on two wardrobe mirror doors, reflected light two units, 180 x 100 x 3.5 cm each. Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Mick Bradley.
Image: Mirror Mirror: Then and Now, 2010, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Mick Bradley.
Image: Mirror Mirror: Then and Now, 2010, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photography by Mick Bradley.
