SUN TO SUN / CHRISTOPHER BUCKLOW AND SIMONE DOUGLAS

This September, two internationally renowned photographers; London-based Christopher Bucklow and NYC-based Simone Douglas, have come together from across continents and hemispheres to explore their shared preoccupation with the ultimate natural light source, the sun, in a new exhibition at Artereal Gallery. 

Entitled Sun to Sun, the exhibition takes the form of a visual dialogue, with the enigmatic work of Simone Douglas responding to Christopher Bucklow’s acclaimed pin-hole photographic works. Marking their very first collaborative exhibition, Sun to Sun is the culmination of decades of dialogue between the artists, not only as peers but also close friends and admirers of each other’s work. 

“When we first met in 1994, we were immediately drawn to each others work. I was profoundly mesmerized by Chris’ images and way of working with light, the sun. This exhibition is the culmination of a long conversation that has continued across countries and time zones,” said Douglas. 

As one of the leading figures of the contemporary British ‘camera-less’ photography movement, Christopher Bucklow is known for his ethereal silhouettes of radiant men and women composed of thousands of pinhole photographs of the sun. His works are held within the world’s leading public art collections including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, amongst others.

Simone Douglas commented: “As I first came into view of Chris’s work, I was profoundly struck by the duality of the body as made by multiple suns. I had been working with the singular sun and here was this artist who had filled the body with hundreds of suns via a camera-less technique that for all intents and purposes was indexical. It was a continuation of a long held desire to ‘fall into the universe’”. 

Currently working as the Director of the MFA Fine Arts Program at Parsons The New School for Design, Douglas has been exhibiting since the late 1980s across photography, video and installation. She has exhibited at and has work held in the collections of the Victor & Albert Museum London, The Tate Modern, London The Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, amongst others. 

In her new body of work, Douglas responds to Bucklow’s work with photographs that capture fractured snapshots of natural elements, evoking both the landscape and an almost primal connection to nature. 

“In the most remote, darkest corner of our universe, there is still light. A camera is a contemporary holder of light. I use a camera at times as it enables me to hold light as it were in my hands, to shape it. A final work might involve an image made using light and the camera conduit of light,” said Douglas. 

Christopher Bucklow commented: “While there are figures in my work, to me the spaces of Simone’s work are aspects of the human too. The landscape of the Australian interior is human, it’s a metaphor for a state of mind, almost a Zen-like field of being rather than a collected ‘particle of individual consciousness.” 

“Photography, a contemporary medium of light, has been in revolution since its inception. Even before it existed, the idea of it, the holder of light, was a radical departure from the way we saw ourselves and the world around us,” said Douglas.

Sun to Sun will be on show at Artereal for the month of September, beginning 3 September and running until 4 October 2014. 

The above video documents Simone Douglas' recent Artist Talk at Artereal Gallery. Special thanks to Veronica Habib for producing this video.