Frith Street Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by Anna Barriball.
Light, memory and the history of photography are some of the abiding themes in this show which brings together several new bodies of work and a moving image piece. These collectively examine the effect of light as it passes through and around objects, casting fleeting shadows and evoking distinct atmospheres. Barriball is interested in trying to capture or document such moments and reflections in her drawings, conscious too of the physicality of the materials she employs.
Windows and other kinds of thresholds have been a recurring theme in the artist’s work, depicting and inhabiting apertures and in-between spaces which are often rendered as one-to-one scale drawings. Here she investigates the overlaps and boundaries between drawing, photography and sculpture in pieces based on the large windows of her Victorian studio building. Constructed from layers of pastel-dusted, wax-coated paper, their blue hue directly references early cyanotype and photogram processes where an item is placed onto photographic paper and is exposed to light. Through this layering, Barriball recreates the effect of a cyanotype print, capturing each glass pane, allowing the intensity of the image to blur and fade, as if a photographic process has faltered.