Simple Alchemy - Marie Lund
HUW DAVIES GALLERY 8 April–23 April 2010
Marie Lund has a long history of involvement in the arts—as a photographer, painter and mixed media artist, and as an art educator. Her resume only hints at her work in solo and group exhibitions, publications and teaching. She has been a member of many professional and community associations in Canberra and elsewhere, including PhotoAccess, Canberra Photographic Society and the MultiFocus group of photomedia artists.
Marie recently left Canberra for the (presumably) calmer environs of the New South Wales South Coast, but continues to show work in PhotoAccess group exhibitions and, now, in this solo exhibition in the HUW DAVIES GALLERY. Her first PhotoAccess solo exhibition was Chocolate Box Pictures in 1997 in our Kingsley Street premises.
An inveterate traveller, Marie has shared images from her annual visits to central Europe with Canberra audiences for many years. Simple Alchemy is something of a departure from the beautiful landscapes and streetscapes we are used to seeing in her name. As she says in her Artist Statement
Simple Alchemy is a group of photograms, created without a camera, generated by either sunlight or tungsten light illumination. It is the process of experimentation that interests me, where the joy of creation tales over the desire for perfection.
This is a very productive departure for Marie. It brings together her interest in photographic processes and her wider fascination with creative media. Obviously control of the technical means of creation is happily subsumed to the prospect of a chance effect, the sometimes more interesting than expected outcome that can come from making images direct to paper and, even more chancy, taking them out of the darkroom. The making of photograms seems to fit very cleanly with Marie’s instinctive approach to making art in nature.
Simple Alchemy was first shown last year at the Shoalhaven Arts Centre Gallery in Nowra. Unfortunately for us some of the images were sold and, therefore, not available for this exhibition. We have chosen to reproduce a few of those images in the catalogue to give visitors a wider context for the body of work Marie has called Simple Alchemy.
PhotoAccess is very pleased to show Marie Lund’s Simple Alchemy in the HUW DAVIES GALLERY at the Manuka Arts Centre.
David Chalker
