oodles and oodles of doodles
Len Lye
The world premiere exhibition of Len Lye will investigate one of the most radical and creative minds of the 20th Century.
"I always do doodle-type images when I'm fishing for something to kind of feel at most one with myself. I doodle with pen and pencil; or bits of steel I waggle; film I scratch." - Len Lye
Close to 100 years after Len Lye began making his art, ACMI is hosting the most extensive exhibition of his work ever mounted: a survey encompassing his forays across film, sculpture, photography, painting and poetry.
New Zealand born Len Lye is an instrumental player in the history of the moving image.
With a keen fascination for indigenous art, coupled with a background in modernist art and abstraction, Lye's career unfolded in London in the 20s and then New York in the 40s, but it is only more recently that his work has been rediscovered globally (most recently, Lye's work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Centre Pompidou in Paris).
It has taken decades of progress in the art world - particularly in areas of technology and media - for Lye to finally be recognised as a visionary. He was a contemporary artist in the truest sense of the term, so that even today his work feels new and ahead of its time.
Although Lye may not have been that well known while he was alive, he certainly mixed with some pretty recognisable names, some of whom were friends and others with whom he worked.
During the 40s in New York, Lye produced a series of photograms featuring Joan Miró, Georgia O'Keeffe, Hans Richter, W.H. Auden and Le Corbusier. Produced without a camera, his subjects would pose on a piece of photographic paper that Lye would quickly expose to light, creating a silhouette image of the sitter.
His fascination with taking photographs without a camera extended further to celluloid. He began scratching marks and patterns directly onto film, creating a form of animation technique. His 'scratch films' (as they became known) had, and continue to have a great influence on experimental filmmakers around the world.
Lye was truly an artist in perpetual motion: always straddling different artistic mediums; investigating all the potentials of sound, movement and images. But what he seemed to value most of all was the art of play and discovery.
The Len Lye exhibition is divided into six sections: Early Films, Photograms, Paintings and Batiks, Doodles and Works on Paper, Kinetic Sculptures and 'Scratch' Films. As you move through the exhibition you will get a sense of the magnitude of this very special and innovative man's mind.
For more information on the Len Lye exhibition click here
Published Tuesday, 26 May 2009
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