Light: Works from Tate’s Collection at ACMI

Curated by Tate in the UK and drawn from their prestigious collection, Light: Works from Tate’s Collection celebrates groundbreaking moments from over 200 years of art history, and the artists who harnessed this elemental force through painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, installation and the moving image.

Connected by their fascination with light as both material and subject, more than 70 works feature in this exclusive blockbuster exhibition, including must-see historical paintings by iconic artists like the great Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers, as well as the atmospheric beauty and transient light effects captured by Impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.

These extraordinary paintings are juxtaposed against equally groundbreaking works from modern and contemporary artists: Olafur Eliasson’s crystalline sculpture Stardust Particle (2014), Yayoi Kusama’s kaleidoscopic The Passing Winter (2005), James Turrell’s immersive Raemar, Blue (1969), Tacita Dean’s 16mm film Disappearance at Sea (1996) and Liliane Lijn’s moving sculpture Liquid Reflections (1968). Viewed collectively, these radiant works draw fascinating links across time, medium and style, projecting light onto the viewer’s body and absorbing them into visions of infinite lustre and luminosity.

This Melbourne Winter Masterpieces® exhibition, organised in cooperation with Tate, illuminates centuries of artistic practice and uniquely places film in a broader art historical context.

Banner image: The Passing Winter, 2005, Yayoi Kusama. Tate. Purchased with funds provided by the Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee 2008. © Yayoi Kusama. Photo Tate 
Homepage slider image: Lis Rhodes Light Music (1975) installation view, South Korea. Photo by Sangtae Kim. Tate. Presented by Tate Members 2012. © Lis Rhodes