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The Fall Of Light Stephanie Crase until Sun 30 April Art Images Gallery 'The Fall Of Light', currently showing at Art Images Gallery, marks artist Stephanie Crase's second solo exhibition since her graduation from art school and more recently from Flinders University in which she completed an Arts Degree with Honours majoring in Screen Studies. Crase's painterly technique is a relatively traditional one, influenced by her time at Adelaide Central School of Art. However, it is her preliminary work that is not so conventional. Crase's interest in 'the screen' is a strong one and plays the important role in her work regarding construction of scene, set design and narrative. She produces physical scenes of domestic environments, predominantly interiors, and then records them using film, playing them back to paint from the moving image. This infuses the works with a slightly blurred, almost photographic quality that makes them extremely interesting both technically and aesthetically. Adding to this interest is that the scenes, which were perhaps non-narrative, suddenly become open to Crase's unique perspectives, altering and transforming their original contexts as the artist paints to her own interpretation of the scene at hand. Another intriguing aspect of Crase's work is the inference of absence and presence. In this suite of works, no human figures appear to be present, yet lights are on, curtains are drawn, a phone receiver is off its hook, a bag sits upright on a bed. One wonders if someone is hiding in the shadows or a corner of the room perhaps. This raises issues of voyeurism and the viewer's role in the painting as we are essentially looking in on a domestic interior that is not our own. We use the cues and look for further signs of life, unsure what we'd do if we found them looking back at us from their own surrounds. Crase's palette, her use of light and her incorporation of negative and positive space within her scene composition are also connected to her screen influences where there is a discernible correlation to aspects of the film noir genre and the uncanny. 'The Fall Of Light' makes for a good title where light is heavily considered, both in its luminosity and its casting of shadows. Instinctively I found myself thinking about the domestic environment in the film 'Sunset Boulevard'. Crase's work is very well executed and as an emerging artist she promises much.  Stephanie Crase 'Blue Paper Bag' 2006, oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches image courtesy Art Images Gallery and the artist  |
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