An exhibition featuring new work by Sally McKay.
BLIND RADIUS II
Sally McKay’s latest body of work sends viewers on a captivating journey into the realms of the seen and the unseen – the central and the peripheral. Following on from her previous project, “Blind Radius,” “Blind Radius II” is yet another masterful exploration of the impact of contemporary visual culture that proves McKay’s talent, situating her not only as one of Australia’s most technically skilled photographers, but also as one of the medium’s most conceptually and compositionally distinctive proponents.
Nicholas Forrest – TheAList.Art
Aren’t they lovely, these beautiful, mandala-like photographs of Sally McKay’s? Doesn’t their intricacy and delicacy whisk you back to grandma’s house and all the comfort and reassurance that you once found among her handmade doilies and tapestries?
Are you sure?
Come a little closer. What do you really see? Plastic figures with plastic guns. Plastic observation towers. Plastic fighter jets and plastic tanks. All arranged in the neatest of circles, all chasing one another endlessly round and round the mandala with their rifles raised, each figure in the sights of the one behind.
Elizabeth Fortescue – Arts Editor – The Daily Telegraph
After more than a decade as a portrait photographer, McKay has attuned her judgement in this sphere, with attention to the play of light, shadow and composition honed on the human subject, now shifted to objects organic and manufactured. The result is a series of works that experience two lives. Her images delight the senses and intrigue the mind with their intricate detail. Yet, draw closer, and you enter McKay’s alternative visual arena – one that seeks out the minutiae of our everyday environments.
From afar, her whimsical patterns take on the appearance of antique lace, but a careful inspection reveals that their dainty ornamentations are indeed dozens of model toy soldiers, figurines from archaic war games and their incumbent plastic artilleries, all frozen mid-pose. In these scenes, the antithetical elements of nature and warfare are disguised in a mutual cloak of alabaster.
Clare Caldwell – The Authorial
