Lumen, ANCA Gallery, Canberra
19th March - 6th April 2014
Lumen is an exhibition of new video, multimedia installation and works on aluminium that explores human adaptation, the boundaries set by our environment, and the ephemeral nature of existence. Lumen seeks to reveal immediate glimpses into the present-day human condition and imagination, and lays bare challenges and fears that need to be addressed in our culture. The human figures in Boynes’ works are distinct individuals, but they also stand for a whole. They move compellingly and expressively, but how they are experienced changes dramatically as they shift in scale or disintegrate into a mass of lines. They become a powerful metaphor for all of humanity, with the challenges of personal and cultural identity, diaspora, and human rights in an environment of constant change.
Some of the work in Lumen is created in collaboration with the PRAXIS Collective, which Boynes recently established with his sister, dancer Laura Boynes, and cellist Tristen Parr (both based in Perth). Their aim is to create work that blurs the boundaries between audio, visual, and performative art forms, and collectively produce something bigger than themselves. One of the works featured in Lumen is a variation of a performance they presented in Perth in late 2013 called Dark Matter– seen here as a virtual performance, with ‘dancers’ moving like low-tech holograms around a shifting surface.
