Artistic bright sparks reflect on light, from Turner to today

Displaying some of the world’s finest static masterpieces seems an odd choice for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, an institution mostly concerned with film, video and animation.

Olafur Eliasson’s Stardust Particle sculpture features in the ACMI exhibition Light: Works from Tate’s Collection. Picture: Tim Carrafa

Displaying some of the world’s finest static masterpieces seems an odd choice for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, an institution mostly concerned with film, video and animation.

But curated under the theme of “light”, their place alongside the museum’s permanent collection is irrefutable.

From Thursday ACMI’s latest exhibition will display a collection of masterpieces from the Tate in Britain celebrating the mastery of capturing light through art and imagery.

The exhibition, titled Light, features 70 works spanning 200 years and includes painting, ­photography, sculpture, installation, drawing and, of course, the moving image.

In an Australian first, the works of Britain’s most famous painter, JMW Turner, will be among the collection, including his biblical landscape painting The Deluge (1805). Monet’s The Seine at Port-Villez (1894) will also be on display, along with a ­series of contemporary works, ­including James Turrell’s trancelike LED installation Raemar, Blue (1969); Olafur Eliasson’s 2014 sculpture Stardust Particle and Tacita Dean’s 16mm film Lost at Sea (1996).

ACMI chief curator Sarah Tutton. Picture: Aaron Francis

“Turner’s work is such a striking and beautiful thing, but some of his abstract and, in some ways, more revolutionary works alongside that is really exciting,” ACMI chief curator Sarah Tutton said. “Seeing the different ­approaches to the world around each artist and their political and social context is really interesting.”

Katrina Sedgwick, the former director of ACMI who now heads the $1.7bn redevelopment of Melbourne Arts Precinct, said harnessing the interrelationships between artists, works, movements and mediums across 200 years allowed experimentation and innovation to be shown.

“Over 200 years ago the great Romantic painter JMW Turner was exploring the behaviour of light, and we see this through seven of his works which feature in the exhibition – his experiments through technical drawings of light reflecting off different surfaces through to his extraordinary paintings,” she said.

Light: Works from Tate’s Collection will run from June 16 to November 13 as part of the Victorian government’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.