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Izabela Pluta
Window-shutter #1-6, 2023unique lumen gelatin silver photographs
122 x 153 cm (set of 6) -
Altitude (simulation) #1
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Image after image #1-7
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Izabela PlutaIMAGEAFTERIMAGE_01, 20237 unique C-type photographs100 x 150 cm each
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Izabela PlutaIMAGEAFTERIMAGE_02, 20237 unique C-type photographs100 x 150 cm each
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Izabela PlutaIMAGEAFTERIMAGE_03, 20237 unique C-type photographs100 x 150 cm each
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Window-shutter #1-7
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Material structure (artist with lens)
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Exhibition Essay, Image after image
By Tony MagnussumGallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert is delighted to present Image after image, Izabela Pluta’s second solo exhibition with the Gallery.Image after image is anchored by seven unique, large-scale photographic works that share a singular source image: a film negative from Pluta’s personal archive. This image captures a sky view from an aeroplane window, and was taken by her father as her family emigrated from Poland to Australia in 1987.In the darkroom, Pluta abstracts the source image beyond the point of legibility and into a series of striking blue and pink colour fields. She achieves this by manipulating the projection of light onto photographic paper with a range of experimental processes including a disassembled camera lens. Released from the precision of their manufactured casing, the unstable lens glass components cause the negative image to collapse and shift, slipping in and out of focus during and between each exposure.Pluta both mythologises and disrupts this moment within her personal history, underscoring the fallible nature of the medium while subtly proposing that memories may be as malleable as light. Complementing the suite of photographs is a set of Lumen prints - of the disassembled camera lens in question – whose ghostly contours of repeating circles fixed to the photographic paper by solar exposure form a kind of photogenic drawing; and a bronze sculpture of the artist’s hands that reveal a negative-space mould of the camera lens’s constituent parts.Image after image continues Pluta’s two-decade practice of utilising analogue photographic techniques and processes to fragment, reconfigure and re-contextualise images, both original and found. Her work is driven by her experiences of migration, globalisation and a fundamental desire to understand the world around her. -
More from the artist - Additional notes about the lumen photographs / exhibition title
The title comes from playing on the idea of images as visualising a kind of trace of something (which is what the Lumen prints are doing). The image (negative of dad’s) that I have used as a source for these 7 works was taken in 1986 - yet it wasn’t printed (made into an artwork ) until now - 2023. So there is an image made at the point of departure (from my birth place ) and another image made ‘across’ time - now in the present - in the darkroom. ‘After image ‘ is also a photo term of sorts, and a way of naming the 'lingering visual impression' after which a flash of light prints a lingering image in your eye after looking at something bright (such as a lamp or a camera flash) and you may continue to see an image of that object when you look away.The Lumen is created from the interaction of sunlight, the disassembled camera lens, and paper to create a unique traces of the way in which the lens touches the photo emulsion when it rests on the paper while being exposed to sun light. The process is referred to as a ‘solargram’ or, by technique, a ‘photogram’ - where objects placed on paper (and exposed to light leave a shadow outline of what was placed on the paper.Lumen prints rely upon the principle that any photographic paper - if exposed to enough sunlight - will produce an image without a developer. What happens to each sheet of photographic paper evolves as a unique measure of time (which could be hours/days), place, and environmental conditions (conditions of light). Once fixed, the image is permanent, as it is in the series Window-shutter hence these are unique prints.
The photographic paper’s colour continues to change the longer it interacts with light duirng exposure, unless chemically ‘fixed’ (immersed in a ‘hypo’ chemical solution like normal photographs). The chemical ‘fix’ process destroys the various colours, dramatically altering the lumen colour. So, if left unfixed, the paper will continue to change colour as light darkens ('fogs') the paper further. For Altitude (simulation) I therefore take a photograph of the lumen to create a digital image of the paper’s colour while preserving the image at a specific point in time - without ever fixing it permanent - and the image that is photographed is subsequently left stored (like a kind of artefact) in the light-tight box preserved in darkness. -
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The Works - Izabela Pluta
May 17, 2023 -
IZABELA PLUTA - OF DIVES, DISTORTION AND DISORIENTATION: VARIABLE DEPTH, SHALLOW WATER.
June 30, 2020 -
IZABELA PLUTA - INTERVIEW
September 4, 2020Underwater ruins and antiquated atlases form sites of inspiration for Polish-born Australian artist Izabela Pluta, who uses photographic processes, video and three-dimensional elements to explore concepts of place, space and... -
Izabela Pluta - Blue Spectrum & Descent Study
September 7, 2020 -
IZABELA PLUTA - PULL FOCUS
September 14, 2020Our Pull Focus video series takes its lead from our print magazine feature of the same name. Here, we focus in on what makes a particular artwork WORK as a... -
Izabela Pluta - The future is female photo essay
November 2, 2020 -
Reflections on Design - Marion Borgelt, Izabela Pluta, Tarryn Gill, Kristen Wang
December 1, 2020 -
Izabela Pluta - Geography of Space, Archaeology of Time
October 1, 2020Izabela Pluta Each year the ACP facilitates a dialogue between an Australian and an international artist with the aim to foster and expand meaningful creative engagement within a global network.... -
Izabela Pluta - Bowness Photography Prize Finalists 2021
August 20, 2020Artist statement: My 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,... -
TOP 5 THINGS TO SEE THIS WEEK - Fernando do Campo, Izabela Pluta
January 29, 2021 -
Izabela Pluta - Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize
April 19, 2021Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize Advancing Art and Opportunity Australian Art – Any Medium – All Women The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize is an annual acquisitive prize that was... -
Izabela Pluta: Nihilartikel
February 19, 2022In 2018, Izabela Pluta went diving off the coast of the Japanese island, Yonaguni, where the Pacific Ocean meets the East China Sea in a stretch of powerful currents. Since... -
Looking for a weekend trip? Here’s a gallery worth a getaway - Izabela Pluta
May 6, 2022When Arthur and Yvonne Boyd gave their Shoalhaven property, Bundanon, to the nation in 1993, the federal government was reluctant to accept the gift. Rather than a valuable cultural asset,... -
IZABELA PLUTA
WINNER OF THE 2019 PERIMETER SMALL BOOK PRIZEFigures of slippage and oscillation by Izabela Pluta is the winner of the 2019 Perimeter Small Book Prize. Drawing on a series of darkroom contact prints titled Spatial misalignments –... -
IZABELA PLUTA
15 ARTISTS 2020 December 5, 2020REDCLIFFE ART GALLERY 5 DEC 2020 - 27 FEB 2021 After her first solo exhibition at the Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Izabela Pluta has been chosen as one of the competing... -
Izabela Pluta | Home(land)
Fremantle Arts Centre June 8, 2007Izabela Pluta was born in Warsaw, Poland, and migrated to Australia in 1987. She works in photomedia and installation, and is currently based in Sydney. Home(land) was produced during an... -
NIHILARTIKEL: IZABELA PLUTA
ART AND DESIGN UNSW GALLERIES January 15, 202215 January - 6 March , 2022 Wednesday - Friday, 10am – 5pm Saturday - Sunday, 12pm - 5pm UNSW Galleries: Corner of Oxford Street and Greens Road Paddongton, NSW...
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Izabela Pluta: Image after image
Current viewing_room
