Measures of Refraction represents the development of Pluta’s work following her underwater research in Yonaguni, Japan in 2018. The exhibition brings together 26 unique cyanotypes and two mural photographs to consider the form, function and legibility of the photographic image. Pluta offers a way of subverting the exactness of photographic reproduction through reflexes that are constantly changing and by employing chance in the work’s materialisation. Her compositions unfold in their making and assume an infinite number of variations based on the conditions in which they were made.
Invented in 1842, cyanotype is a photographic printing process that uses sunlight and iron salt solutions to fix the silhouette of an object that has been placed onto photosensitive paper. Known for their Prussian blue colour and tonal variation, cyanotypes were first employed to reproduce notes, diagrams and botanical studies. Pluta’s cyanotypes are made in response to the disassembly of her large-scale work Apparent Distance 2019 (commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for The National 2019: new Australian art) that depicted footage captured by Pluta in 2018 when she experienced the underwater Yonaguni Monument.
The process of making the cyanotypes for the iterative series Blue spectrum and descent brought back the physical conditions of diving and photographing in Japan. While harnessing sunlight to print the cyanotypes in Sydney, the works were affected by the wind that threatened to blow the negatives away. These circumstances signalled back to the turbulent winds and currents in Yonaguni, at the cusp of the Pacific Ocean and the East China Sea, which made the dive precarious.
As such, the environmental conditions in which the imagery was obtained are subtly echoed in the making of this new work, through a series of unrepeatable moments orchestrated by the elements. These abstracted duplications, in their very nature, refract the essence of the site.
Blue spectrum and descent is presented against Pluta’s own version of a page from an oceanic atlas. Her mural photograph Oceanic Atlas (vanishing) wasmade through a haptic, camera-less printing process that echoes the physical features of oceans and gestures towards the erasures of coastlines and invented depths. The detailed scientific data represented in the source material are unhinged by Pluta’s contact negatives that she makes by passing light through the original artefact in the darkroom, thereby forming a fictitious diagram. The additional mural photograph, Untitled (stair), depicts an anchored stair, overgrown with foliage and ascending into a void. Packed with allegorical potential, the work is an example of the artist’s intentional coupling of images in her installations, which draw out the conflated languages of photography and the nuances they embody as physical objects.
Measures of Refractionspeaks to the permeability of photographs, and responds to the precariousness of Yonaguni’s sunken rock formation and the sensations of being submerged underwater.
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MAIN EXHIBITION SPACE
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Izabela PlutaOceanic Atlas (vanishing), 2020Pigment Print on Eco Solvent Cotton Rag Paper200 x 114 cm (aluminium shadow frame, unglazed)Edition of 3 + 2 AP
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Izabela PlutaUntitled #2 (stair), 2020Pigment Print on Eco Solvent Cotton Rag Paper150 x 184 cm (aluminium shadow frame, unglazed)Edition of 3 + 2 AP
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Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 9 (Variation 2), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique
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BACK ROOM
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Izabela PlutaGlass, 2011Pigment print on cotton rag paper, (framed, white box w/glazing)76.2 x 76.2 cmEdition of 5 + 2 AP
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Izabela PlutaUntitled 3 (from Apparent Distance), 2019Pigment print on aluminium45 x 45 cmEdition of 5 + 2 AP
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Izabela PlutaUntitled 5 (from Apparent Distance), 2019Pigment print on aluminium45 x 45 cmEdition of 5 + 2 AP
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ABOUT IZABELA PLUTA
Pluta’s studio practice embraces photography as a way of interpreting and re-conceptualising the function that images have in the present. Negotiating the possibilities of how material forms come together, she draws largely on finding, fragmenting, translating and reconfiguring things that are both photographed and found. Conceptually anchored in the effects of globalisation and Pluta’s own personal experience as a migrant to Australia, her creative pursuit seeks to articulate a fluid mode of moving through, and being in, the world. These ideas have led her to using a discursive photographic vocabulary as a purveyor of temporality, mutability and the impermanence of places. Pluta mediates on images with all their potential connections all at once, questioning how things from one place fit into another and speaking to experiences of place in the face of our changing environmental and societal condition.
“Pluta permanence as an artist arises in part from her two-decade persistence in experimentation with the form: photography. While she also employs sculpture, sound, installation and film in her work, her rule breaking with photography makes hers an ever-evolving language, as she wrestles with the visual articulation of tensions between diametrically opposed elements.” - Ineke Dane, Art Collector #93 Jul-Sept 2020, p157
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Izabela Pluta was awarded the Perimeter Small Book Prize which led to her debut artist book, Figures of Slippage and Oscillation, being released by Perimeter in 2019. In the same year, Pluta was commissioned to create a significant new work, Apparent Distance, by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for The National 2019: new Australian art; an installation that formed an undulating image plane across the AGNSW’s Entrance Court requiring viewers to navigate its shifting terrain through the complexity of the photographic elements. In 2018 Pluta was the inaugural artist for the Marrgu Residency at Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation in Peppimenarti. In 2018 she also presented new work at The Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; and in Form N-X00 at the US Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura, Venice, Italy (in collaboration with Other Architects). She has also been the recipient of various awards and fellowships including the Qantas Foundation Encouragement of Australian Contemporary Art Award (2009), The Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant (2008) and The Freedman Traveling Arts Scholarship (2007).
Pluta has held solo exhibitions at Artspace Ideas Platform, Sydney (2017), The Glasshouse Regional Gallery, Port Macquarie (2019); UTS Gallery, Sydney (2014); Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale (2012); Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne (2011); 24 HR Art, Darwin (2010) and The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2009). Notable group exhibitions include Civilization: the way we live now, The National Gallery of Victoria (2019); Watching the clouds pass the moon, MAC Lake Macquarie (2016); Timelapse, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale (2016); Through the lens, Horsham Regional Gallery (2014); and Foreplay, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart (2012). Pluta has undertaken national residencies including at International Art Space (IASKA) Kellerberrin, as well as International residencies in Tokyo, Barcelona, Paris, Belfast and Beijing.
Her first European solo exhibition, Variable depth, shallow water, is planned to take place in 2021 at Spazju Kreattiv, Malta’s National Centre for Creativity in Valetta. A selection of cyanotypes that comprise Blue spectrum and descent will be featured alongside an experimental text by Pluta in HØH JOURNAL’s inaugural issue, Disrupt - a new platform for contemporary art and literature in late 2020.
Izabela is a finalist in the 2020 Bowness Photography Prize opening at the Monash Gallery of Art in October, and has also been selected into the invitational acquisitive award, 15 Artists, at the Redcliffe Art Gallery, Queensland in November. -
BLUE SPECTRUM & DESCENT, AVAILABLE SINGLES
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Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 22 (Variation 1), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique -
Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 21 (Variation 1), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique -
Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 20 (Variation 1), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique
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Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 18 (Variation 1), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique -
Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 17 (Variation 1), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique -
Izabela PlutaBlue spectrum and descent 9 (Variation 2), 2020Cyanotype on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
Unique
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BLUE SPECTRUM & DESCENT, AVAILABLE GROUPS
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Izabela Pluta5 variations* from Blue spectrum and descent, 2020Cyanotypes on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
104 x 168 cm (overall Installation)
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Izabela Pluta, 15 variations* from Blue spectrum and descent, 2020
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Izabela Pluta26 variations* from Blue spectrum and descent, 2020Cyanotypes on watercolour paper52 x 42 cm (framed, white box w/glazing)
50.5 x 40.5 cm (sheet)
156 x 672 cm (overall Installation)
Unique
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