Peter Sedgley included in major new show at the University of Sydney

Peter Sedgley is among many leading artists included in Light & Darkness, a major exhibition at the University of Sydney's Chau Chak Wing Museum.

 

Opening in January 2022, the show explores luminosity, colour, movement, race and politics across three decades of modernism, all drawn from the university's esteemed J.W. Power Collection.

 

Sedgley is represented as part of the luminal, op and kinetic works of the 1960s, alongside work by Lucio Fontana, Bridget Riley and Jean Tinguely. 

 

Sedgley's large-scale Chromosphere was purchased for the University in 1967. In fact, its curator Gordon Thomson bought it before the painting had even been completed, so impressed was Thomson with what he had seen in the artist's studio. He was also aware that a similar 'Target' painting featured in Antonioni's iconic film Blow-Up, in 1966, and that the paintings received critical acclaim earlier that year when unveiled at an exhibition in London.   

 

Such 'Target' paintings date from a particularly successful period for the artist, whereby Sedgley combined paint on canvas with dichroic lamps / kinetic lights, to create wholly original and enthralling explorations of light and colour, with similar examples held in the collections of Tate and the Arts Council.    

 

The University of Sydney's collection is now managed by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA). As a major artwork, Chromosphere has appeared in several museum exhibitions, including the MCA's Light and Movement in 1994, and Transformers: A Moving Experience, at Auckland Art Gallery in 1996.