'Darkness by Day' by Shannon McGrath

One of Australia’s most respected architectural and interiors photographers, with her work appearing in over 200 different books, journals and magazines nationally and internationally, Shannon McGrath has also long pursued an artistic oeuvre.

Her current exhibition Darkness by Day explores a theme of visual enquiry into surface and what may be concealed and revealed depending on each viewer’s experience. Shannon and writer Jacinta La Plastrier produced the artist statement for the exhibition, below.

These stacks of saw-mill timber were shot in broad daylight without any artificial lighting, in situ and without any intervention in their arrangement. I was drawn to the dark element in them that survives this ‘glare’ yet reveals it in other ways – how the light naturally hits the objects and remains in an interplay with the darkness and shadows of the grain, the individual and beautiful markings the blade has left on the natural material, and the extrusions and hollows of the layering of the wood. This gave the show its title.

Even in the jewel-like, cobalt image, there is this dynamic. This is a theme that runs through my creative photography: surfaces which are also hidden, which slowly reveal aspects and possibilities, subtleties and complexities. I considered wood as an essential building material so I approached the stacks of timber and photographed it with the same sensitivity as architecture.

Darkness by Day
Until July 14
Carbon Black Gallery
188 High Street, Prahran, VIC.
www.carbonblackgallery.com.au