Duality of Light (2009)
Commissioned by Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund (2009)
Produced by Forma

Duality of Light is an immersive environment to be experienced by one person at a time. This work completes a trilogy of works begun by Wallworth in 2004 with the interactive piece Invisible by Night followed by Evolution of Fearlessness in 2006. These works use an intimate interactive environment to communicate powerful human emotions: grief and loss and the re-emergence of hope.

Duality of Light allows each visitor to go on a unique and singular journey past sound portals that challenge our perception of space. In navigating the installation environment visitors encounter others whose surprising presence reveals the duality at the heart of the work. Like all Wallworth’s work, Duality of Light will utilise the most recent technological tools for immersion and interactivity in order to reveal some of the most fundamental states of human existence.

Previous Exhibition Dates:
Adelaide Film Festival, Samstag Museum of Art (2009)

Evolution of Fearlessness (2006)
Commissioned by New Crowned Hope Festival
Produced by Forma

"Abhaya in Sanskrit means fearlessness, the Abhaya mudra symbolizes protection, peace, and the dispelling of fear. The gesture is made with the right hand raised to shoulder height, arm bent, and palm facing outward."
Reading Buddhist Art: An Illustrated Guide to Buddhist Signs and Symbols
(Thames & Hudson, 2004)

Evolution of Fearlessness is an intimate‚ interactive installation that responds to touch. The installation is created as a sequel to Wallworth’s earlier work Invisible by Night, 2004. Together the two works deal with loss and its aftermath, survival and beyond that, strength.

In creating this work‚ Wallworth filmed portraits of 11 women residing in Australia‚ but originating
from countries such as Afghanistan‚ Sudan‚ Iraq and El Salvador‚ who have lived through wars‚ survived concentration camps or extreme acts of violence. The work focuses on a state beyond terror and loss most closely akin to mercy.

Built around the importance of gesture‚ Evolution of Fearlessness provides a tactile gateway to the living women contained in the piece‚ whose stories we are given glimpses of but whose lips do not speak. The work is an intimate reveal of the strength of the human spirit.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION DATES:
Sundance Film Festival, US (2009)
Melbourne International Arts Festival, AU (2008)
Festival d'Art Lyrique, Aix-en-Provence, FR (2008)
Auckland Triennial, NZ (2007)
New Crowned Hope Festival, Wien, AT (2006)

Invisible by Night (2004)
Commissioned by Experimenta.org
Produced by Forma

Invisible by Night is a gently interactive video installation which responds to touch and presents a projection of a life–sized woman whose eternal pacing can be quietly interrupted by the viewer.
Commissioned originally for The Melbourne Festival 2004‚ in response to the layered history of the site of Melbourne’s first morgue, Wallworth chose to create a piece about the process of grief and loss, and the transient nature of compassion.

Invisible by Night builds gesture into its interactive structure to create powerful emotional connections with the viewer. The piece signals our neglect of ‘histories of site’ through our more immediate lack of compassion for those who suffer among us. Its attention to the transient beauty of compassion and interaction traverses boundaries of urban community and history.
Wallworth describes the woman’s movements as “achingly slow and repetitive, like grief itself…enacting the worn gestures of someone who is in pain and from whom the pain cannot be removed – the tiredness of grief”.

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION DATES:
Adelaide Film Festival, Samstag Museum of Art (2009)
Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, US (2008)
Festival d’Art Lyrique, Aix-en-Provence, FR (2008)
National Glass Centre, Sunderland, UK (2007)
New Crowned Hope Festival, Wien, AT (2006)
Melbourne International Festival, Melbourne, AU (2004)

About Lynette:

Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist whose practice spans video installation, photography and short film. In her current body of work, she specialises in the creation of immersive installation environments frequently using forms that respond to the visitor. Sydney Festival is pleased to present a trilogy of these works shown together for the first time. The artist describes her intention as “bringing together technological advances and ancient understandings, new media and old practices, electronics and the electricity of human touch.” These works explore the hidden intricacies of human connection in a wide and increasingly complex world.

“There are still moments of transfiguration that come wholly unlooked for, as puncturing instants of experience... Such moments are to be found in Lynette Wallworth’s immersive installations, instants of shift that slip in under the guise of wonder, of grief, in intimate connection with another.”

Jemima Kemp
Art Monthly Australia, May 2009