Touched by Light

Touched by Light an IRIS touring exhibition comprising of five photographic bodies of work around the core theme of 'light' it was curated in 1994 to coincide with Signals Festival of Women Photographers.

"Each of the photographers has, in her own way, cultivated a practice which manages to be both disciplined and magical - pushing her skills to the limits yet without dictating how the images are to be read. Beneath the layers and the membranes, we have a sense of what may lay beyond, but this can ultimately only be imagined - there is the atmosphere of things erotic and delicate, that almost seems to unfold before us, inviting us into its centre. Luscious." (Rhonda Wilson - Director, Seeing the Light)

The Artists; Jean Baird's piece, 'Squid, Two Cuttlefish and a Chocolate Umbrella', plays a light-hearted, witty game with notions of classification and language through exquisitely crafted, minimal, colour photographs.

Jo Holland's work, entitled 'Inflorescence' is made without the use of a camera, so that vivid, vibrant images of flower fragments are registered directly on Cibachrome paper.

Tracey Holland's two separate pieces of work; a pair from her 'Window' series, where mysterious objects float, or are trapped, in a translucent medium through which the viewer is seduced into looking to the point of drowning; and her 'Bat Series'; three intense studies of the physical qualities of a dead bat.

Helen Robertson fascinations are with the human body and with such formal issues as scale, proportion and space. Intense scrutiny also characterises the work, which comprises two separate pieces, similar in terms of subject matter, but thoroughly differentiated by subtle shifts in treatment.

Miranda Walker, series of seductive, mysterious, blue images that lull the viewer into a peaceful reverie from which the knowledge that the tranquil water depicted is that of the most radioactive sea in the world jolts him/her into questioning the evidence of his/her eyes.