Australian artist Taree Mackenzie creates videos and installations that explore how we perceive light, space and colour. The artist’s ‘Pepper’s ghost’ works stem from the optical illusion of the same name, originally popularised in the 1800s in Victorian stagecraft and entertainment and named after British scientist and inventor John Henry Pepper. Still commonly used in sideshows, theatre and concerts today to create a ghostly ‘apparition’, the effect is created when a brightly lit object offstage is reflected onto a transparent surface onstage, so it appears to materialise in front of the audience. Unlike traditional Pepper’s ghost set-ups, Mackenzie displays her entire apparatus, allowing viewers to see the inner workings of the illusions.
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The installation is on display in the exhibition ‘Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction’ at the Queensland Art Gallery from 23 September 2023 – 11 February 2024.
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