In Reflected Glory IV (2016) Rebecca Baumann directs a spotlight onto colourful and reflective materials she has carefully arranged on the floor: squares of origami paper in metallic colours, a length of gold foil loosely arranged like a curling wave, a row of Perspex rectangles and dichroic prisms, and a scattering of tiny mirrored squares. As in theatrical productions, the spotlight announces a performance; the intense beam of light elicits a visually explosive response, throwing glimmering rays and patches of incandescent colour across the gallery walls and onto the ceiling.

Each material produces different corresponding reflections which invest them with an ambient, almost magical presence that extends beyond their physical form: diffuse golden light flares upward from the foil; a soft patchwork of colours is generated by the paper squares; while the tiny mirrors create flecks of white that resemble diamonds or stars. For Baumann, making such work is like ‘painting with light’, with chance bringing unpredictability to her method. She says: ‘I think of this process as involving an element of alchemy, where the materials undergo a transformation in some way. I control the beginnings of the experiment, but ultimately it is the properties and potential of the materials themselves that realise the work’.¹

An artist working principally with abstraction, Baumann has developed her diverse installation and object-based practice around the utilisation of light and colour and the inherent qualities of her materials. While in Reflected Glory IV the effects of colour and light have been carefully staged for presentation in the gallery, the initial inspiration for this series of works, begun in 2012, comes from an everyday, yet still wondrous phenomenon that Baumann first observed in her studio. Sunlight through the window bouncing off random materials in the room created fleeting colourful effects on the wall, each unique according to time and place. Knowing that such phenomena are transient only heightens our sense of them as miraculous. ‘I wanted to recreate the beauty of this ephemeral moment with artificial light and exaggerated impact’, she says.²

1 Artist’s statement, 2012, published in Luminous Flux: Lightworks, exhibition catalogue, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth, 2013: http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/exhibitions/past/2013/luminousflux , [accessed online 22 February 2016].
2 Ibid

Born 1983 Perth, where she lives and works
rebeccabaumann.com

REPRESENTED BY
Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand