Second Silence
June 12 - July 11, 2009
Atmospheric Optics IX
Aurora are spectral, lurid and nigh impossible to photograph. Megan Jenkinson, in a marvelous series called Atmospheric Optics,
has (re)created their optical play over landscapes of Antarctica using
digital photography, photoshop and prismatic plastic lenses. The effect
is best described as lenticular. And it enables the artist to phase a
sequence of images, thereby capturing a sense of time within a single
frame.
So, in Atmospheric Optics IX,
the Ross Sea ice shelf as seen from Scott Base is photographed low in
the picture plane. We see pools of meltwater amongst pressure ridges
made by waves passing underneath the ice. Above is darkness, the work
is black. But only intermittently, as this is also a space alive with
flickering light. Flashing greens, yellows and blues shimmer like great
curtains of light, their movement illuminating the snowscape below.
In Atmospheric Optics XI,
a handsome aerial shot low in the dry valleys burns alongs its ridge
line in orange and purple – this sensation of heat on the horizon
changing dramatically as one walks past the work. The effect is
deliberately flame-like. Then, when almost past, a single shaft of
blue/green lights the sky, radiant and god-like – a metaphor that
Jenkinson quite literally takes one step further in the series The Heavens Opened.
In this trinity of works, cumulus-filled skies change colour according
to the dominant palette in famous crucifixions by Van Eyck, El Greco
and Delacroix. These works are subtle but sentinel. 
Less subtle are the works in The Spectrals series. The Voice of Reason and Stages of Inner Light
present objects from the personal collection of the architect Gaudi: an
object in clay and a Dominican prayerbook. The latter turns radiant
orange and green, reversing out with an almost devotional, Rothko-like
modernist intensity. While The Voice of Reason is spun enigmatically
within its frame, the feeling more New Age and crystalline, more rhyme
than rational reason. T’is from the possession of Gaudi – what else
would we expect?
Selected works
List of Works
Atmospheric Optics series
digital lenticular polypropylene prints
editions of 5 +2 AP, framed
1. Atmospheric Optics IX, 2009, 900 x 1200mm
2. Atmosoheric Optics XI, 2009, 900 x 900mm
The Heavens Opened series
digital lenticular polypropylene prints
editions of 5 +2 AP, framed
3. Van Dyke, Crucifixion, 2009, 590 x 480mm
El Greco, Crucifixion, 2009, 590 x 380mm
Delacroix, Crucifixion, 2009, 590 x 480mm
Le Seur, Deposition, 2009, 490 x 490mm
Spectrals series
digital lenticular polypropylene prints
59 x 39.3cm, framed
editions of 5 +2 AP
4, 5. & 6. Stages of Inner Light, 2009
7. The Collection, 2009
8. The Voice of Reason, 2009
Acknowledgements:
Megan
Jenkinson would like to thank Antarctica New Zealand and Creative New
Zealand for generously sponsoring the Antarctic Artist’s Fellowship
that enabled her to visit Antarctica at the end of 2005.
Megan
Jenkinson lectures at the Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of
Auckland. She would also like to acknowledge the tremendous support she
has received from the University and the NICIA Faculty, by way of a
research grant that enabled her to extend her investigation of the
lenticular process.
