Sara Longwood

Aperture

3 – 21 February

Opening Night

Wednesday 3 February 6pm – 8pm
Special Guest Robert Lee Davis

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Using phone snaps as her primary reference, Sara Longwood mirrors our age of ‘image capture’ and virtual reality. The works of Aperture reflect what Sara sees on that screen, but those images graduate from literal to nuanced as her confidence grows and memories of place and sensation come to the fore. In the end, Sara Longwood embraces the ambiguity of her holiday photographs, transforming them through the experience of discovery, standing as the bridge between memory and the aide-memoire.

In Aperture, Sara Longwood presents a series of paintings founded on digital images taken on her phone during travels through Bhutan, the Australian Central Desert, the Pacific Northwest, and over the the Andes Mountains. Mesmerised by the contrasting qualities of light and colour across these divergent landscapes, Sara felt compelled to capture them in paint on her return home.

And thus began another journey, as Sara reconciled memories and sensations with the sometimes equivocal scope of her photographs, and then faced the challenge of developing the skills to render the pivotal information that made each of those places unique. Early works of mysterious misty Bhutan literally translate image to canvas. But the robust configurations and colours of the Central Desert required Sara to exercise a different approach, using the shorthand of the digital image as a launching point for the abstract portrayal of muscular and multi-hued landforms. Depicting the massive grandeur of the Andes Mountains, Sara again interprets her source imagery with fresh eyes, reconstructing a sense of vertiginous contours with newly-confident manipulation of light and colour. These newfound tools also enable Sara to transform static reference images into a celebration of shapes, shadows and scintillating sky, bringing life and movement to a walk in the woods.

Contact
Phone : (03) 9482 3550
mail@redgallery.com.au

Address
157 St Georges Rd
Fitzroy North, Victoria, 3068
Map

How to get here
Tram: route 11
Stop 21 just north of Edinburgh Gardens

Melway ref: 30B12
Parking in nearby streets

Bus: 504 (Reid Street)