| Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist whose practice spans video installation, photography, and short film. In her current body of work, she specializes in the creation of immersive installation environments that call on the visitor to physically connect with them. The interplay between the moving image, sound, space, and visitor as component elements in the ecosystem of a work is the artist’s primary focus. She describes her intention as “bringing together technological advances and ancient understandings, new media and old practices, electronics and the electricity of human touch.” |  |
Roisin Stimpson
Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist whose practice spans video installation, photography, and short film. In her current body of work, she specializes in the creation of immersive installation environments that call on the visitor to physically connect with them. The interplay between the moving image, sound, space, and visitor as component elements in the ecosystem of a work is the artist’s primary focus. She describes her intention as “bringing together technological advances and ancient understandings, new media and old practices, electronics and the electricity of human touch.”
Wallworth has exhibited around the world: her first solo show premiered in Europe at the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna in 2006. She held her New York debut at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in July 2008 with Invisible by Night, part of the Mostly Mozart Festival. More recently, she was invited to exhibit Evolution of Fearlessness as part of New Frontiers at the Sundance Film Festival 2009.
Both Invisible by Night and Evolution of Fearlessness belong to a trilogy that was recently completed by Duality of Light, a new commission by the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival 2009 presented at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Together these works investigate powerful human emotions such as grief, hope, and the resilience of the human spirit.
The new work was featured alongside established works by the artist and represented her largest solo show to date in her native country of Australia. In the run-up to the exhibition, Plexus Films in association with ABC-produced Connected By Light, a documentary about Lynette Wallworth’s work. Visually rich and emotionally compelling, the documentary offers a glimpse into the life of an artist as Wallworth prepares to present the denouement of five years of work.
Significantly, the film documents the Australian premiere of Evolution of Fearlessness at the 2008 Melbourne Festival of Arts. It was this festival that sparked the idea for the trilogy when it presented Invisible by Night in 2004. Evolution of Fearlessness features 11 women, all of whom have escaped persecution to lead new lives in Australia, most of them in Melbourne. Connected By Light follows two of these women, Ayen Kuol (Sudanese refugee) and Eva Marks (Viennese Holocaust survivor), to the Australian opening of Evolution of Fearlessness, where all 11 women meet and see the work for the first time. The documentary culminates with the world premiere of Duality of Light, launched by Australian film director Rolf De Heer.
