Exhibitions

'Sunlight & Shadow' is a panoramic exhibition of almost sixty works, presented in two parts and unashamedly sentimental in tone, brought together to honour of that most poetic of seasons, autumn. Individual works delve deep into the inherent beauty and melancholia of the season, through the work of artists active from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Taking its name from an exhibition curated by the late Warwick Reeder in 2006 on the work of Pictorialist photographer John Bertram Eaton (1881–1966), part one of Sunlight & Shadow features thirty original works by Eaton (twenty-eight on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria), to pay tribute to the important work that Warwick undertook to keep Eaton’s legacy alive, and to bring Eaton’s work to the attention of a new generation of art lovers.

Eaton’s beautiful photographs are seen here alongside a sprawling selection of works, both national and international, from a private collection. The prints and paintings that comprise part two of Sunlight & Shadow are united by their mutual harmonious depiction of nature as a source of beauty and spiritual nourishment. Many of the artists featured, such as William Blamire Young, Thomas Balfour Garrett and John Hall Thorpe, were at the forefront of artistic practice in their lifetimes, but in the intervening century have become less well known.

Sunlight & Shadow also represents, therefore, a fascinating tour through a pantheon of artists today largely overlooked or largely unknown in Australia. The exhibition knows no geographic borders and makes no distinctions based on style, but seeks instead to encourage conversations between artworks and art viewers that draw out common themes, be they in mood, temperament, subject or spirit.

Image: 
William Blamire Young
Nunc Dimittis, c.1924
Watercolour on paper
48 x 62.8cm
Private collection