Sometimes it seems that I have seen it all before, not more paintings about painting, please no more photographs of empty playgrounds, and then I see some new, amazing and beautiful art. This outstanding art is the reason why I’ve been visiting so many galleries and looking at so much average art.
It is hard to see at first. Inside Neon Parc in Brunswick it is dark except for the coloured lights of Taree Mackenzie’s art. What is going on? The set up for each piece, rotating black shapes and panels of light and glass, neatly occupies the dark corners of the gallery. The elegant symmetry and minimalist design of the mechanism that creates the images are exposed. The science is known, involving reflectivity and coloured filters removing colours, you may have even seen some of it in dinky science demonstrations but never at this scale or elegance. The optical trick may be obvious but it is so beautifully executed that I didn’t care.
Mackenzie uses a couple of basic optical effects to create simple beautiful images, ultra-modern abstract animated images. The images that exist on the glass’s surface and looking through the glass are a purely retinal art. The simplicity and minimalism of the rotating objects and primary light colours contributing to their trippy, hypnotic experience.
Mackenzie has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts and an interest in maths and science. She has a strong track record for creating installations that use simple tricks using light and colour to create abstract images. However, unlike Mackenzie’s previous exhibitions, this time her simple abstract images are mediated without the use of video cameras and monitors. For more read an interview with Mackenzie by Maura Edmond on Primer.
Black Mark 